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World of New Genesis
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- Moloth – The Believer is Happy; the Skeptic is Wise
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The more I watch, learn and hear about the Conservative movement in America, the more I realize that it should be called the “Regressive” movement. Universally, there is an element of regression inherent in the philosophy. Even the simple comparison to their political opposites, the “Progressives”, shows a disdain of advancement, of change, of improvement. But it is not merely the ‘conserving’ of the ideals we have, but the return to an earlier time… one that they would say is a better time.
But, of course, that is regression. All conservatives, to SOME degree, wish to slink back into the darkness and ignorance of history, the only factor that differs is by how MUCH time. I know Conservatives who want to regress back to a time when homosexuality was considered a mental illness… instead of moving forward down the path of human rights for all. Some wish to go back to Segregation and Jim Crow laws. Some wish to regress to before Women’s Suffrage… Hell, some are still pissed about the outcome of the Civil War. Others still think the country would be a better place if it were a Christian Theocracy, to be something like Europe during the Dark Ages. At the far end of the spectrum are the truly Regressive and the most devout of their religion: we should return to Biblical values and cast off the sins and perdition of all modernity. Of course, they wont blatantly admit as much, but their arguments, legislation and actions reveal this to be true.
All Conservatives are actually Regressives. Its all just a matter of degree and how far back they wish to go.
икониикониПравославни иконииконописikoniсвети георгиikoni
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 Bitch Slap |
More Vernacular from my office…
Coding by Braille: Making changes to logic or layout without being able to see the output.
Cowboy Coding: Coding like the rugged individuals did back in the oft-romanticized days of computer frontiers and lawlessness. No meetings, no committees, no bosses, just you and the vast, uncharted wilderness of a dev environment. Of course, in these ‘civilized’ times, Cowboy Coding is frowned upon at best and is a fire-able offense at worst.
Ninja Coding: Coding in a stealthy or hidden way. Specifically, making changes in a system in such a way as to not alert the users, owners or other developers of that system.
Pirate Coding: A mix of Cowboy and Ninja Coding with an added element of theft or plagiarism. Basically, how most ‘Fast Development’ happens.
Kraken Coding: the only thing that Pirates fear. A massive, system wide change that will have many known effects, but could also have countless, possibly horrific, UNknown effects as well. Named after the immense, multi-tentacled sea monster.ови услуги
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I’ve been saying this for years!
FROM: http://meaningwithoutgodproject.blogspot.com/2010/12/dungeons-and-dragons-vs-church.html
Is there any substantive difference between a weekly gathering of Dungeons and Dragons geeks and Church?
Let’s find out?
- Does the weekly gathering involve getting together with close friends?
- Is the weekly gathering facilitated by one member who guides the discussion?
- Does the weekly gathering involve the use of a core group of dense and inscrutable books?
- Do the inscrutable books require multiple guides, addenda, compendia, rulebooks and explanations and to facilitate understanding of the central books?
- Do some members of the weekly gathering support an extremely literal interpretation of the core rulebooks while other members advocate a more liberal and lax understanding of their tenets?
- Do the people in your gathering use arcane terms and strange sayings that an outsider would find odd?
- Does the weekly gathering involve ‘serious’ and occasionally intense discussions of invisible and/or magical beings?
- Do the people in your group pretend that they are involved in an epic struggle of good against evil?
- Does the group’s epic struggle of good against evil involve magic and invisible beings, demons and spirits?
- Do the people at your weekly gathering actually believe that the magical beings and epic struggle you discuss are real?
If you scored 9 out of 10, then your geekly gathering is called Dungeons and Dragons.
If you scored 10 out of 10 then your weekly gathering is called Church.
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I’ve been saying for years that the real reason that Christians hate D&D so much is that when WE talk about healing with a touch, creating food and drink from thin air, converting sticks into snakes, curses, angels, magical fruit, demons, alternate planes of existence, objective and measurable morality, resurrections, avatars walking the earth, half-deities, talking animals and flames, mythological monsters, magical weapons and armor, walking on water and being granted magical powers based on devotion to a deity…. WE KNOW ITS NOT REAL. We don’t fucking go through life thinking that its REAL. we know its a GAME.
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Wisely, it was after High School when one of my oldest friends came out.
I was visiting Chattanooga after being moved away for a few months due to my parents divorce and I was happy to be in the comfortable company of my peers, if even only for a long weekend… I was at his house, in his man/nerd cave of a basement playing video games, reading graphic novels and otherwise just enjoying the good life when he suggested we go out for Chinese. I offered to drive, knowing that he had only his family’s geriatric and temperamental minivan for transportation. He firmly, but quietly, replied “No, its okay. I’ll drive.” I remember thinking it a little strange, but not bizarre, and it quickly left my mind.
Looking back, I can see that he was nervous and preoccupied with something but, at the time, i was not nearly perceptive enough to even guess at what it could have been. Over a heaping plateful of Sweet n’ Sour Chicken, he suddenly blurted out “I’m gay.” I laughed, and being reminded of Nirvana lyrics, chuckled, “yeah, well, aren’t we all?”
Not satisfied with my reaction he tried again, “No, I mean, I’m gay.” With a wonderful amount of patience he looked me in the eye and awaited my further reaction.
“What?”
“I’m gay. Actually gay.”
I laughed again, nervously. I was accustomed to his sense of humor being more advanced than my own and i awaited the impending, if roundabout, punchline.
“Scott, i’m gay.”
It finally started to sunk in. I recall just staring at him, a slightly wary smile on my face. Even though the term didn’t exist at the time, i still was clinging to the notion that i was being Punk’d.
“Really? Like GAY, gay?”
“Yes. I’m really gay.”
It felt like i sat there in silence trying to process this new data for long, long time…. and it must have been, because his patience with my density began to falter, “Dude. Think about it. have i EVER talked about girls? have i EVER mentioned having or wanting a girlfriend?”
Of course, the answer was No. I thought back on the six or seven years i’d known him. Crap. I thought he was just nerdy, more nerdy than me. I suddenly felt like a very bad friend for not picking up on this sooner. As I gathered my thoughts the total picture came together and snapped into sharp focus. So many things suddenly made sense. So many little things… muttered comments, polite declinations of certain social interactions, strange, out-of-the-blue conversations… made sense now.
I met his eye and said, “I want you to know that this, in NO way, changes our friendship or our relationship. So what if you’re gay?”
He was relieved. I asked a few more questions. He told me that if i asked “Aren’t you afraid of getting AIDS and dying?!”, that he’d hit me. I believed him, but the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.
The whole evening was something of a setup. Smartly, he had done his research. Getting books on gay lifestyle and handbooks titled ‘How to Come Out’, he had planned on who, when and how he’d come out. Not during High School… that woulda been suicide (if not just socially, especially in the South). No, he bode his time and waited until after graduation. He drove, just in case his confidant got upset and left him, stranded. He picked a public place, in order to lessen the possibility of outburst.
Having explained to me how he had planned out the night, i admitted that i was slightly hurt that he had thought that he had to take so many precautions with me… surely, he didnt think i would have reacted in any of those barbaric and insensitive ways. He was just playing it safe and i completely understood. Better safe than sorry The books had told him that people’s reactions are often unpredictable to hearing this revelation.
On the drive back from the restaurant, i was trying to consider all of the ramifications of this development. How will he find a boyfriend? How long had he known? How will his parents react (being old hippies, i’m sure they would be completely okay with it)? Did he come out to me, because he thought I’M gay? Oh, damn… am *I* gay? (after a few moments of self reflection, nope, guess not).
He must have been so lonely, to carry such a secret for so long… to feel that a natural part of he who he was had to be hidden lest people treat him poorly. What a shitty, terrible burden for ANYONE to have to carry. What a shitty world that we live in, that people actually had to worry about being persecuted just for being themselves, in a completely harmless way.
In a certain selfish way, i was proud that he chose me to be the first person to come out to. I felt like i had given the ‘right’ answer… because it was a true and heartfelt reaction. Still mulling over all of the consequences of the evening, i struggled to find some levity. Something finally occurred to me!
“Well, i guess i don’t ever have to worry about my best friend stealing my girl!”
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As they say, it gets better. It does. My friend now has a boyfriend of many years and they have a wonderful home together. I know that the ignorance and bigotry of the world still phases him (how could it not), but he has generally insulated himself from that sort of bullshit. Your real friend won’t care and will support you. Your family will love you no matter what, even if they don’t know how to handle the news. There are others out there that have gone, and are going, through what you are. You’re not alone.
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http://open.salon.com/blog/sl_rose/2010/10/04/10_obvious_truthswilfully_ignored
1. Wealthy people do not have your best interests at heart.
2. The well-to-do feel deserving of their riches and see no need to excuse themselves for having such material wealth—which gives them a sense of being exceptional and entitled, disconnected from ordinary people.
3. The goal of the well-off is to keep their money and grow it. You are not part of that formulation because you are not necessary to achieve their goal.
4. If you earn income that places you in the middle class or lower, you will not improve your circumstances by aligning yourself with the rich, including voting the way they may vote and thinking the way they think.
5. Although you may be told that “you, too, can be rich some day,” it most likely will not happen. That is why the rich make up less than two percent of the U.S. population.
6. Fortune 500 companies have determined they can achieve their goals by using labor from all over the world. In fact, they prefer to pay a fraction of what an American wage earner expects, so they employ workers in third-world countries. Consequently, you are meaningless to them as a worker.
7. The economic system in America is designed to keep your wages and earnings adequate enough to buy the goods and services that corporations want you to. However, you will never earn sufficient money from your employer to rise into the top economic tiers.
8. If you support tax cuts for the rich because it’s only “fair,” no worry. The wealthiest Americans, including corporations, have legions of accounting experts to rely on so they experience little or no tax burden anyway. By the way, it’s the middle class which pays the bulk of income tax to the states and the federal government.
9. Since your time in the cradle, you’ve been trained to want the things corporations want you to desire. Eventually, you may find that you cannot afford those items and you will feel badly about yourself—like a failure and a loser. You’re supposed to feel that way.
10. You’ve grown up with myths: “American is the land of opportunity.” “Anyone can make it in America.” “There’s still something called ‘The American Dream.’” It’s effective propaganda, but it has nothing to do with the real world and your real life. Best option is to step over the bull**** and forge your own way.
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“Sorry but I don’t really know what a biome is…”
This statement was made on an internet forum for a game that i’m currently playing…
Now, being a generally reasonable person, it seems to me that the first logical connection to make is that this person is:
A. Connected to the internet through a web browser.
B. is able to operate said browser.
C. doesnt know the definition of a word, that he/she saw on the internet.
Given these parameters, my mind screams the obvious. ” WHY DON’T YOU FUCKING LOOKING IT UP?? YOU HAVE THE LARGEST REPOSITORY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, TO EVER EXIST, LITERALLY AT YOUR FINGERTIPS.”
You’re already ON the internet! Fucking go to Wikipedia. Go to Google. Fuck, go to Yahoo Answers, I don’t care. But do NOT helplessly, pathetically claim to not know something that someone is talking about. Take an extra 60 seconds, look it up and THEN respond with a useful or insightful answer. Now, if you don’t find anything, maybe the knowledge truly is that rare, or maybe the person misspelled it. Fair enough. But ‘Biome”?? Seriously? I learned about that word in 6th Grade, in Tennessee!
Its like starving to death because you can’t be arsed to lift the fork full of food all the way from the plate to your mouth. ITS RIGHT THERE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biome
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This is so true for me that its painful.
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Wow… Couldn’t have said it better myself.
http://www.dearcoketalk.com/post/407638687/on-christian-close-mindedness
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Hello Dear Coke Talk, I have been following you since before you created a seperate tumblr, and I enjoy the cut-throat advice and wisdom you provide, and the aid you have given me indirectly through this blog.
But, I have a question/comment for you. In some of your posts you speak very negatively of religion. You’ve touched on the close mindedness of Christians.
My question for you is this, isn’t kind of close minded to lump and entire group of people like that? I am a Christian, but I don’t think less of people based on their own religious beliefs or who they go to bed with at night.
I’m not trying to show you that every Christian has an open mind. You and I both know that a majority of people in the Christian faith are what you assume them to be. Heck, I even assume them to be close minded.
What I am getting at is that there are Christians out there who are open-minded. Not all of us are alike.
Sure. Not all of you are alike, but what every practicing Christian has in common is enough for me to lump you all together and think less of you.
I don’t have to respect your beliefs. Respect is earned, sweetie.
That’s not close minded of me, by the way. I’m educated in comparative religion. I have the Bible, the Qur’an, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Tao Te Ching all next to one another on one of my bookshelves. Can you say that?
I doubt you’ve even taken the time to critically examine your own religion’s sacred texts beyond whatever Sunday school fantasy-adventure ride you were strapped down for as a child. Even if you have, you still identify as a believer, and all that tells me is that you aren’t enough of a rational thinker to separate myth from reality.
Listen, I get that you’re asking me for a Christian hall pass. You want me to wink and nod and tell you that you’re one of the good ones because you don’t think less of me for my lifestyle. Well, no. It doesn’t work like that.
You’re not doing me any favors by not condemning me. That sentiment isn’t an expression of open-mindedness. It’s an expression of tolerance, and you know what? Fuck your tolerance. I don’t need it.
You have a holier-than-thou attitude. Literally. Do you understand how condescending it is to be tolerated by someone like you? I don’t owe you respect just because you smile and pretend to show me some.
Part of the problem here is that you’re missing the point about what it means to be open minded. As a Christian, you’ve co-opted a set of canned answers to life’s greatest mysteries. It’s bullshit.
You don’t know any more about the nature of the universe than I do. All you’ve done is surrendered your rational thought to an ancient cult in exchange for peace of mind. That is inherently close minded.
Right now, all you’ve got is the potential for an open mind. Start asking questions. Examine your religion with a critical mind. Stop fearing the unknowable. Open yourself up to all possibilities and never surrender your rational thought.
Hopefully, you’ll stop being afraid of the insignificance of your life and the inevitability of your death, and you won’t need an imaginary friend in the sky to tell you everything will be all right.
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I remember, when i was 9-ish, that i had asked my mother what happened to babies that died… She responded that they automatically went to Heaven… within a day, i had reasoned out that the most moral thing a parent could do was to kill their babies as soon as possible, in order to assure their place in eternal Heaven, rather that let them grow up and, possibly, do things that would make them go to Hell. It would be irresponsible of a loving parent to take that kind of gamble with their child’s eternity.
The logic is as sound to me today as it was when i was a kid when i first thought of it. Its no big wonder that i made the conscious decision to be an atheist not much longer after that.
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http://www.archive.org/details/DontBeaS1947
It is sad that this film, released 63 years ago, still has a message that needs to be repeated.
This is the United States of America. It is not about WE and THEY… its about US. We are ALL minorities here.
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