9/11 terrorists coming to trial in NYC

Apparently the right wing is all up in arms about how terrible/awful/bad/unsafe/disrepectful this is --> http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/alleged-911-masterminds-be-tried-nyc

Only because they rely on their strength of numbers can they get away with this cowardly ignorant un-American hypocritical protest.


We are a nation of LAW. Bush undermined that by fiat when he ignored due process, and the rest of our government was too shocked/intimidated/confused or sold-out to protest as they should have. So much for liberty and justice for all.

Yes. The terrorists are not U.S. citizens, and technically not protected by our constitution or bill of rights. Ask yourself this... they committed the crime HERE. Where should they be tried? HERE. How is that not blatently obvious? Even the supreme court seems to agree (in Boumediene_v._Bush)

"But American lives will at risk if they get off on a technicality". Excuse me? Imagine you're a terrorist who helped bring down the world trade center... and now you have a chance of being set free... Which is the LAST city on this planet you'd want to be set free in? Hm? If you paused even a moment before saying "New York City" you're an idiot.

Will "Americans" be hurt by these trials? Likely yes... the bastards that ignored American law and principles may be be exposed for what they are: instruments of a tyranny. They are people that brought shame on this country in how they responded to this attack and have disgraced us in the eyes of the rest of our planet. They made hypocrites of us all.

To use some of the right's vile rhetoric: "We invite future terrorist attacks by..." by showing we're so quick to disregard our laws and ethics... things that we, as a nation, hold to be an inherent definition of what we stands for.

Not to make light of 9/11, but if we forget who we are anytime some jihadist knocks down a few buildings... they're going to continue trying just for the sport of it, like a malicious child tormenting ant hills to see the fury and chaos that results.

Bringing these people to trial is a good thing. And they all should come to trial, not some of them secreted away to 'military tribunals'.

It is time to stop playing at their level and return to our own.

Aion

For anyone else that may be playing (or interested in playing)... Aion.

I currently have 5 Asmodian characters, all on Yustiel:

Jopsy - Chanter
Tortis - Templar
Jopster - Spirit Master
Jormungand - Sorcerer
Presto - Mule (err... Spirit master)

gmail = amsterdam?!

Okay, just minding my own business here, tried to access my gmail stuff and got no response from their servers. (A rare enough occurance that my curiosity spun up).

So, I wanted to know if I was getting through to the gmail servers... and if there were problems between me and them.

Turns out... I'm being routed to AMSTERDAM?! I can't get my email because it's at a pot bar somewhere? ;)

Bizarre. San Jose I would have expected... but Europe? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
traceroute to gmail.com (74.125.79.83) ...
1 192.168.5.1 (192.168.5.1) ...
2 98-99-121-165.sbx14022.sandica.wayport.net (98.99.121.165) ...
3 12.90.139.97 (12.90.139.97) ...
4 cr83.sffca.ip.att.net (12.122.110.102) ...
5 cr1.sffca.ip.att.net (12.123.15.109) ...
6 ggr3.sffca.ip.att.net (12.122.137.21) ...
7 att-gw.sanfran.level3.net (192.205.33.78) ...
8 vlan79.csw2.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.68.18.126) ...
9 ae-74-74.ebr4.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.69.134.245) ...
10 ae-2.ebr4.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.135.186) ...
11 ae-94-94.csw4.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.134.126) ...
12 ae-91-91.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.134.77) ...
13 ae-3-3.ebr4.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.132.93) ...
14 ae-94-94.csw4.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.134.190) ...
15 ae-92-92.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.134.157) ...
16 ae-44-44.ebr2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net (4.69.137.61) ...
17 ae-2-2.ebr1.Dusseldorf1.Level3.net (4.69.132.137) ...
18 ae-1-100.ebr2.Dusseldorf1.Level3.net (4.69.141.150) ...
19 ae-2-2.ebr1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net (4.69.133.89) ...
20 ae-11-51.car1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net (4.69.139.130) ...
21 GOOGLE-INC.car1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net (212.72.46.230) ...
22 209.85.254.250 (209.85.254.250) ...
23 64.233.175.246 (64.233.175.246) ...
24 72.14.239.199 (72.14.239.199) ...
25 209.85.255.118 (209.85.255.118) ...
26 ey-in-f83.google.com (74.125.79.83) ...

Unintelligent Design

Whoever was behind the intelligent design initiative was absolutely brilliant.

What better way to promote a sense of martyred solidarity among the faithful than to offer a seemingly 'reasonable' middle ground between creationism and evolutionism. One that was obviously laughable, ludicrous and offensive to the 'fact-based' scientific community.

Perhaps we were wrong to laugh them down so savagely, it seems to have only further polarized the country along creationist/evolutionist lines more than ever.

There isn't even room for debate any longer. People are on one team or another and they just don't talk about it... and it seems like more of this country is swallowing the 'ignorance is bliss' tainted kool-aid dished out by the likes of Glenn Beck and blow-hards like BillO'Reilly and the mega-churches of the religious right.

Who cares if you're right, as long as the mob is on your side. Speaking of mobs, what the hell is it with the "no public option" loonies? I have yet to find a single coherent logical argument AGAINST a single payer public option. I've looked. And Looked. No one can put it in terms that make any sense to me. Maybe I'm an idiot, how would I know?

Rant rant rant. Anyone want to help me understand the opposition a bit better? Please?

More Aion...

More on Aion ... "Open Beta Week" is over, the above images are my now deceased characters: Frodo (a ranger), Jopsaro (an assassin), Sethgreen (a gladiator) and Elamont (spirit master with his water pet there). (click on them to enlarge)

I know I said I was going to be on Triniel with my Asmodae characters... but apparently that's now considered an 'east coast' server. Considering that I tend to game late at night, I may actually jump into the Oceanic server 'Nezekan'. I'll still use Vaizel for my Eloys characters if I bother with that side. It seems Asmodae are *far* more popular at the moment, that could be a balance problem for Aion.

Aion is fun to play and beautiful to look at.

It's a shame their login system is such a spewing mess of festering dog vomit!

The "Pre-select" phase started at noon today. The point of this is to allow pre-order customers to reserve names and servers they want to play on. Due to "Technical issues" that were not present during either beta phases, I haven't been able to get into Aion to pick my server or names today. "Can not connect to authentication server." is the error I keep getting, when it bothers to give me an error at all. The rest of the time it just silently sits there doing nothing after I attempt to log in.

Somewhat disappointed. More annoyed at how much time I wasted today trying to figure out if this problem was on MY side or not.

YES my dsl link is working fine.

YES my copy of Aion is fully patched.

YES I completely re-installed Aion FROM SCRATCH.

YES I tried it without my firewall up.

YES I tried sacrificing a chicken at midnight. (okay no, not really).

YES I sent a barking mad ticket in to ncsoft tech support... maybe I'll get another unhelpful auto-reply from them someday.

ANYWAY. It's not like I can actually PLAY.. still have to wait for Sunday for that. Assuming I can actually log in on Sunday. (I'm not feeling lucky at the moment).

ANYWAY... sorry. Grumpy. (This blog is for random ranting after all. There you go.)

So, a report card, CLOSED BETA performance compared to OPEN BETA performance:

Graphics: No change, still excellent. I'm embarassed to say I've got over 500 snapshots from the game on disk now, which is very unlike me. Maybe part of the photofrenzy is based on knowing my beta characters would soon be gone forever and I wanted some record of having them.

Gameplay: No change, still love it... Glad so much of the content seems to be solo-able and pick-up groups come together easily enough for the few areas where soloing is suicidal.

Chat "content": WORSE. This isn't a technical issue, it's a "newbie behavior" issue. It's better just to turn OFF the region and LFG channels to avoid the trolls. Conversation is dominated by WoW-fans/deserters. Hopefully now that the beta tourist/trolls have to subscribe and pay to blather on things will calm down a little.

The Chat System itself in Aion, frankly, still blows chunks:

1. The /ignore command. We have no choice over how we use caps in our names, why is this command case sensitive? Sorry but that just utterly moronic. Fortunately there doesn't seem to be a limit to how many people you can ignore.
   
2. Local chat prefix is /s, (or /normal ?) It was too much trouble to add /say as an option? Way too many people are confused by this... and obviously so because of #3...
   
3. unknown /slashcommands should NOT be echoed to the current chanel. They should generate an error "command /whatever unknown". or something.
   Chat system NEEDS WORK.

Voicework: Somewhat more annoying. After a week of listening to the clerics yelling "Dombraro" I have to admit I liked whatever they were chanting before. The shriek of the female in their battle cries is just over the top annoying. Fortunately I think that kind of voicework can be easily reduced in volume in options.

Music: IMPROVED. more nicely integrated than last time. More subtle, less stage-stealing/repetative. Yay! =)

LAG: SAME, little to none. Almost non-existant in my experience, had 20 minutes of rubberbanding around midnight and a disconnect, but the rest of the day was smooth as butter. The complaints about lag, (from what sounds like ComCast customers) was unending though. (Unfortunately they weren't lagged enough to completely silence them. ;)

FPS: SAME. very decent with mostly maxed out settings on my 4 year old box. Max-rez tends to make the video cut-scenes stutter some, so I stay on a slightly lower rez setting, with the other params maxed.

New Character Appearance Options: IMPROVED. Heh... Without intending to at first, one of my characters started looking like Seth Green, so, well, I tinkered with his face a bit more and have been getting compliments in game for the resemblance. (er, well, green skin not withstanding) =) oh, and because we can't have spaces or caps after the first letter in names, he was merely dubbed "Sethgreen". Sigh. Anyway.

Questing Choke Points: MUCH IMPROVED. No where near as big an issue as it was in Closed Beta, they apparently added several more 'channels' (parallel instances of the newbie areas)... definitely a better experience than in closed beta where a standing group of 30 people were standing around cutting in line to grab a quest completions item in a few spots. (they only spawn once a minute it seems)

Logging In: STILL AWFUL. The loading screen takes *FOREVER*. Far too often progress never advances from the LOGIN page to the EULA page because the authentication servers are overloaded. Heck you don't even know if the game is hung or still trying half the time. I've waited for EULA page to come up for 10 minutes with no feedback. Bad... bad... bad... terrible.. unprofessional... bad. Add progress bars or *something*. @)#%&)#*$#. I've been trying to get into the pre-select for 45 minutes now. 50% of the time, the login page hangs, 50% of the time I get a auth server not responding. *grr*

Crafting: (no experience with it in closed beta). As a long time Secondlifer, the idea of crafting in MMO's seems more like collecting ceral box-tops and mailing them back in for prizes to me. Normally, I can't be bothered with it. Even so, I dabbled with "crafting" in Aion a little during the open beta, and may play with it further in the live version. The apparatus is nicely modelled/animated, the system seems reasonable. Fair activity to engage in while watching a movie or something on the side. ;)

I still need to shop around to find a large casual mostly PvE, guild of level-headed gamers to join up with. My goals are to explore the classes I've picked to play to their fullest and to see the world... not to farm the same content over and over. That may not be compatible with a lot of guilds.

Yellowstone

The trip to Yellowstone was quite enjoyable. And it most definitely did not suck having a room on the 3rd floor of the 'old' part of the Old Faithful Inn facing the infamous geyser itself! =)

While I normally tend to leave the photography to people with better cameras, I did a little myself, and, for fun, created some "Crossed Eye Stereograms". To view them, click on the image to enlarge, sit back a little and then cross your eyes so that you "See Double". If you see four images you're over-doing it.

If you have trouble, make sure not looking at the image from an angle, hold your thumb up midway between you and the image. Focus on your thumb and then slowly move your thumb closer to your nose. At some point your focus should 'lock on' to image behind your thumb. =)

Some if the images work out better than others.. the one with the trees and the river seems to work best for most people.

Still culling through the rest of the pics, and will post a few more when I've whittled the set down to 5 of the best.

Aion

Aion: Tower of Eternity (by NCsoft) is yet another entry into the "swords & sorcery" style of MMORPG. Already released (and apparently quite popular) in Korea and China... I've had a chance to dive into the last two 'closed beta weekends' that preceed the US/EU translated version, slated for Sept 22, 2009

Without a doubt, Aion is the most photogenic game I have ever seen. Stunningly beautiful avatars, outstanding use of lighting, delicous water effects, tasty magical combat, and fluid animations. While some corners were cut on some effects and (at times) the world's detailing relies more heavily on images instead of modelling, but the overall effect, especially the artistry in the architecture makes me salivate like a kid in a candy store, and runs quite well even with the graphics settings maxed out on my "no-longer a spring chicken" desktop system

Music: Sadly, I'm not as wild about it as others seem to be. It blatantly proclaims it's 'anime' roots which isn't a bad thing at all, but it loops rather obviously and, at times ramps up into these pompously/over-dramatics swells in otherwise very mundane situations, calling unnecessary attention to itself. It's like having a charming child nearby that disrupts conversation every few moments because they want attention, tolerable up to a point, annoying thereafter. (I admit, as far as sound transitions and relevance go, I was spoiled long ago by the game "Sacrifice" released by Shiny). I know from experience that music plays a strong role in how often and how much I play a game... we'll see if that becomes a problem for me with Aion or not.

The Aion back-story in a nutshell: A planet where the sun/god (Aion) is at the center, and the people live on the inside of the 'shell' around it. The world was split in half by war and treachery. One side, the Eloys, live in eternal light, they are beautiful and little changed by time. The other side, the Asmodians, live in shadow and have evolved claws, talons and spinal manes, and darker skin. Both sides fight a more ruthless outside force (The Balur, a draconian/serpentine race) and each other.

Reconciliation between the human factions is certainly impossible, the Eloys attempted peace talks with the Balur, which resulted in the cataclysm that split their world. They blame the failure on Asmodian treachery. The Asmodians blame the cataclysm on the overly trusting Eloys for lowering their world's defenses and inviting in the destructive Balur. Neither Eloys or Asmodian are clearly 'good' nor 'evil', and they display traits of both. There are hints that the Eloys are vaguely more 'lawful' and the Asmodian's embrace 'chaos/anarchy' more, but even that is clearly present in both factions. Artistic styles aside, both factions proceed through the first 10-15 levels doing relatively similar things though in stylistically different environments.

Asmodian for me... I'll definitely be on the dark side. Claws, talons, manes, glowing red eyes, black wings and life in the shadows appeals strongly to my style of play, more so than the Eloys which inhabit a world where you'd expect to find unicorns and butterflies around every corner. When the game releases, my Asmodian characters will live on the USA server that starts with "T" (which rhymes with T which stands for TROUBLE). My Eloys characters will be on the USA server that starts with "V" (for virtue?). Can't have characters of different factions on the same account on the same server. Spies and double agents must get second accounts for that. ;)

Scope, Scale & Levelling: The world feels much smaller than other MMO's (like:WoW, EQ, V:SoH) and there's definitely a sense that one could, in a reasonable amount of time, actually see all of it. Levelling seems is relatively quick, there's still a bit of grinding, (it is an MMORPG after all) but play seems to evolve in nice cohesive and interesting 'chapters' with very clearly optional side-quests/activities rather than scads of contrived unrelated errand quests. The lower levels are very obviously training for the PvP heavy upper levels.

Voice work is nice, though there's definitely a palpable 'hostile/condescension' received from non-player contacts until they warm up to you. (and sometimes not even then).

Richness: backstory seems packed into everything it seems, random books in homes, libraries, quest-drops and such sometimes evoke cut-scenes and insights into past events. Normally, I tend to blast past that kind of stuff as just 'fluff' in most games... but in Aion I find they really draw me in more than usual. The story/theme/setting/culture/history is very well integrated, internally consistent, and seens well thought out, unlike the random bland/banal/inconsequential/formulaic fluff I typically find stuffed after-the-fact into other MMO's.

Character creation is definitely a delight... some of the toons I haven't included here actually resemble various familiar celebrities. Avatars range from sublime to comical, ageless to ancient, petite to ogreish, with subtle nuances that will definitely seperate those with an artistic eye from those with a bit more distorted perspective.

Sadly, my cute mage characters are now headed towards the bitwise equivalent of a black hole... I'll particularly miss Jopsan (the white/gray haired Asmodian sorcerer pictured above), JopsAndon (the dark-haired Eloys spiritmaster pictured above).

Unions and Reunions

This seems to be the year of (re)unions... starting with:

* A beautiful trip to the beach near Beaufort, SC for a casual week with the extended family

* Then, a trip to Flagstaff, AZ to meet up with the brilliant friends that I was lucky enough to fall in with during those crazy formative years known as "College"

* Then, ComicCon - while not technically a reunion... it feels like it. Getting to see some of my favorite artist/writers for a few moments and to collect the last year's worth of new material, especially the latest issue of Phil Foglio's Girl Genius.

* I've just returned SLCC09 in San Francisco, and what an excellent trip! Met way more Residents, Lindens and fans of my Particle Laboratory than I expected! And it was a chance to finally meet the 'carbon-based' versions of some of my favorite 'silicon-based' friends. And, as with all conferences, made new friends and associates who will undoubtedly inspire many SL projects yet to come!

* Next? Off to Yellowstone for geek & geyser time with an old friend from DragonMud who has been the catalyst for both my relocation to San Diego and my involvement in Second Life.

* And then? Coming up on the 20th anniversary of DragonMud... and while that reunion will undoubtedly occur online, it will certainly be 'a trip'.

And in between all this... I'm still slaving away, trying to get my Vehicle Laboratory in Second Life open to the public... and indulge in a bit of guilty non-productive gaming that I'll blog about next.

Public Option

Apparently corporate shills are staging "grass roots" protests at town hall meetings, trying to quash support for the public option bill. As someone who doesn't currently have employer paid-for healthcare... the public option is an issue I have a great deal of interest in.

If you run into any "Deathers" people who claim that the public option would ruin America, here's a few of my favorite soundbites:

"The public option gives US the freedom to choose... Are you against Freedom?"

"Competition will drive down the cost of healthcare. Cheaper healthcare would be just like giving American businesses a huge tax break... you're in favor of tax breaks right?"

"I'll take the Apathetic Bureaucratic Government instead of Blind Corporate Greed when it comes to my healthcare coverage, thanks."

I read a lot of incendiary stuff over on CrooksandLiars that makes me boil for a minute or two, a sentiment I'm confident is shared by many who visit the site. This latest, however, I find repulsive on a whole new level. If you're interested:

Christianist Group's Billboard Compares Atheism To Murder

Truth in Advertising?

I've been working on my marketing material for various products that I sell in the 3d virtual world known as Second Life®, and as my usual curious self was wondering "Does Truth in Advertising" apply to me promoting an entirely virtual product?

So I went a-googling, found a nice F.A.Q. on advertising and the Federal Trade Commission.

Which got me thinking... (oh dear) ... Isn't it time the FCC adopted some sort of "Truth in Broadcasting" statute?

Fiction, parody, etc, all are fine, free speech and all. But to knowingly assert or imply something blatantly false, as FACT in a "News" or "Social Commentary" setting? There should be *CONSEQUENCES* for reporting deceptive and unsubstantiated claims and passing them off as substantiated truthful facts. Especially if such 'stories' are likely to influence voters.

They're welcome to continue lying their asses off the government shouldn't have the right to censor them... but if a news agency and the interests it serves are benefiting from the mis-information they disseminate... there should be heavy TAXESor FINES on those activities to balance them out.

It goes without saying which "News" corporations I think would be the least interested in seeing such legislation passed.

Seperate is NOT EQUAL

"Same-sex couples retain all of the fundamental substantive components encompassed within the constitutional rights of privacy and due process, with the sole (albeit significant) exception of the right to equal access to the designation “marriage,” a term that — for purposes of the California Constitution as it now reads — the people have decreed is to be reserved for an official union between a man and a woman. Although Proposition 8 does diminish the rights of same-sex couples under article I, section 1 in this one respect, it does not have the sweeping constitutional effect suggested by the Attorney General’s argument." -- GEORGE, C.J. Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court

---

Domestic Partnership is not the same as Marriage with a different name. (from wikipedia)

	Domestic Partnerships	Marriages
Can file without being required to share a residence?	NO	YES
Available to minors with parental consent?	NO	YES
Can be filed without witnesses and not included in public record?	NO	YES
Partners of state employees eligible for the CalPERS long-term care insurance plan?	NO	YES
"Putative Spouse Doctrine" ?	NO	YES

Going Postal

I've just sent a one page LETTER to the California Supreme Court Justices, who have until June 5th or so to render their opinion of Prop 8. An actual real paper letter. It feels so antiquated... and official.

A week on Harbor Island

So, despite threat of Swine Influenza... I'm on the non-left coast for the week... at the peach colored house in the middle here:

View Larger Map
The panorama from the back porch:The view from the front porch:


The wildlife out here is something else. "The beach is a buffet... and everyone's on the menu." We could see everything from the Osprey carrying off fish... the dolphins and sharks churning up the surf... the pelicans and ?herons? smacking into the water... pale white ghost crabs scuttling around at night... and the horseshoe crab mating season. (photo borrowed from my cousin Sam).

Tea for 2

Happy FOX syndicated "TEA bag day". Snort. A few hundred people gathered in Boston... and small groups of loyal FOX ditto-heads around the country. Woot.

Kind of pale in comparison to the 80,000+ that gathered in San Diego in protest to Prop 8 passing and other cities. But anyway.

Neologasm of the day: Astroturf. A false 'grass roots' uprising.

Random rantage: There's a rash of 'pro-(traditional/exclusive)-family" videos appearing lately. Far from the worst but the most infamous of which starts with "A storm is coming..." and goes downhill from there.

Over and over folks are decrying that their religious freedoms are being threatened by gay marriage. Best counter argument I've heard yet:

Some churches WANT to perform same-sex marriage... but LAW forbids it in most states. Now.. whose religious freedoms are under attack here? Really?

Tea bagging

Apparently there are a bunch of people planning to hold a 'tea party' on April 15 because they object to bailouts and paying taxes. I won't link to the right-wing nutjobs frothing at the mouth over it.... but I will re-post my comment on their follow-up thread:

Mad at taxes?

Demand that we reduce the stupid wasteful size of our bloated military - and demand we return to peacetime operations with a smaller standing force.

Think about it.... the bail out money is a small fraction compared to how much the U.S. has wasted by "helping" Iraq in a foolish and failed neocon attempt at empire building. The chief goal of which seemed to be helping their war-profiteering defense-inc buddies.

Those money that should have been going into making America an stronger economic force to be reckoned with.... into schools - scholarships - universities - R&D - etc.

So be glad you have to pay taxes... at least you're making money. Unlike the growing number of jobless people running up credit card debts just to pay their mortgages.

Please... if you can afford it... go have your stupid tea. Maybe some people in need will get hired to clean up after you. (which some of you will be paying for out of the interest your late tax payments. How generous of you.)

More than he asked for...

I'll be nice and not reveal the name of the person who asked me this in Second Life(tm) today. (chat posted without permission from the other party).

From "A curious resident": Heya jopsy, if your not busy, can you make a script for me, im to lazy to figure it out myself atm. If you can, all i want is it to generate keys starting from NULL_KEY to all z's. Not that hard but i can't think of a way to script it to change all the places of the key, and yea, all keys range from 0 to z each letter.
oh, and it must start at the end of the key and work it's way back to the start (end to index 0)

TRANSLATION: I want the secret unique name for EVERYTHING in Second Life, and every possible name for content that hasn't yet been created too. Every image/texture, person, group, object, sound clip, ... everything. (I'm guessing he wants this so he browse through other people's content and use it without their permission)

I initially replied with: May I ask what you intend to do with these keys?


Regardless of what he replies with... this is the answer he's about to get:


For starters... The list you're asking for is about 10 billion times larger than necessary. (Digits in keys only go up to F, not to Z)

Since each digit has 16 possible digits, and there's 32 digits, your list will have 16^32 keys in it, easy math.

Of course, 16^32, is just a simple, non-scary way of saying: 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456
(that's more than 340 "Undecillion" keys. I had to look the word up, actually.)

If you have 100 scripts, each generating 100 keys every second... your list will be done in 107,902,830,708,060 BILLION CENTURIES.

On the positive side, after we've left Earth and it's been consumed by our sun after it goes supernova, maybe we'll have technology that will store that much data.

So anyway. You still want that script?

(I could have just said "no", but where's the fun in that.)

P.S. He replied... and is trying to write something so that he obtain a resident's key from their name. (which is actually probably the only partially legit possible use for something like this.) I softened the message slight upon delivery. ;)

Pillar of Salt

I'm no biblical scholar... but I recognize exaggeration and cover-up when I see it.

The story of Lot in Genesis (wikipedia) is about the nephew of Abraham. Because of quarrels between Abraham's and Lot's shepards, Lot moves his family and business to Zoar (which is soon destroyed along Sodom & Gomorrah and two other cities). Lot persuades angels to spend the night in his house instead of on the street... and when the depraved of the town came to his door to 'meet' (original word sometimes translates as 'rape' apparent) the angels... Lot offers them his daughters instead. The townsfolk weren't interested. Hmm. In thanks, the angels warn Lot the city would be destroyed, and they should flee and not look back. He flees with his two daughters and wife. The wife looks back, turns to pillar of salt. Later his daughters get their father drunk, sleep with him and get pregnant, giving birth to sons. Sons that later become patriarchs of the nations of Moab and Ammon.

Um. Riiiiiiight.

How about this interpretation:

Lot moves into a new town and sets up business pimping out attractive young men and women. Not content with that, he and his hustlers engaged in theft and other illicit activities. Conflict and trouble with the authorities soon follows. Lot's crew sets fire the town and escapes during the chaos. There likely was no wife to turn into a pillar of salt. Lot retires in the mountains with two of his prostitutes. The greedy young hustlers decide to move on to another city, where the cycle of theft and arson continues until they're caught or disband.

And that bit about Lot's daughters' incest fathering the patriarchs of Moab and Ammon? Just mudslinging against neighbor nations.

In the news

I couldn't watch the whole thing, it was just awful.

California Supreme Court appears likely to uphold gay marriage ban - from the Mercury News - in brief, Ken Star (defending prop 8) was slick and articulate.... Christoper Krueger, the senior deputy assistant attorney general (challenging prop 8) was incoherent and acting like he'd never spoke in public before.

Justice Joyce Kennard nailed why they'll likely not decide in favor of the challenge: "opponents of the measure would have the court choose between 'two rights ... the inalienable right to marry and the right of the people to change the constitution as they see fit"

Which goads me to ask, what the fricking hell do we have justices for if they will not stand up against changes to law and constitution that are UNJUST.

Without the direct involvement of the judicial branch of government, the democratic process is no better than a lynch mob with a paper trail.

Magic and Betrayal

Bear with me as I bring this up... again... to say something a little different.

CA's supreme court is in the process of reviewing the legality of Prop 8... and my mind is drawn back to the topic.

First off, a very minor point, I marvel at the 'magic trick' being pulled by the dogmatic types. They cry out that their religious freedoms are being threatened... and demand censorship of all things gay. Imposing religious oppression is not one of the freedoms enshrined in the constitution last I checked.

The Gung-ho Prop 8 supporters are fighting to preserve their right to pretend that homosexuality is some exotic addictive sinful vice like heroin. The moderates, (people that likely voted for Prop 8 on a whim), are more likely to feel that they just don't want homosexuality paraded about in front of children. (I wouldn't want children seeing heterosexuality in practice either.)

Ask any straight guy what they think of two guys having sex, and they'll probably look disgusted. A reaction not unlike the one you'd get if you asked them what they think of their own aging parents having sex, actually. Funny that.

The cornerstone issue for me is this: Appeasing the homophobes by pretending to be straight is wrong.

Pretending is, at best, a temporary thing. The truth inevitably comes out. When it does, people feel betrayed, lied to, respect and trust severed, and in some cases marriages ruined.) The usual daytime soap drama... but with real lives destroyed instead.

In a world where people talk freely about their wives or husbands... gays remain silent and pretend to be single (if they aren't)... or claim to have opposite-sex partner (if they don't). Lying to friends, family, co-workers puts one constantly at risk of exposure, blackmail, extortion... even attack and retribution.

Not to mention the self-loathing that results in leading a duplicitous life.

The lying and betrayal of trust done by those that feel they must pretend to be normal is (in my strongly held opinion) THE root cause for all the other self-destructive things attributed to the so-called "gay lifestyle".

So, pretending that sexual orientation is "no one's business"... or relying on "Don't ask don't tell" merely makes matters worse, not just for gays but for the people who will some day find out they were lied to.

And... without State and Federal recognition of gay marriage, people will be compelled to lie to be successful in society... and others will continue to have the "Freedom" to blackmail and attack them merely for being different.

Not necessarily the kinds of freedoms our founding fathers had in mind either.

/mute ... /ignore ... /ban4life

Firefox, or Google's Chrome browser need a plug in that silently omits any blog posting that includes any reference to Ann Coulter or Bill O'Reilly. (like this post for example)

So tired of blog-o-sphere being regularly swamped with the latest outrage from these boring old hate-mongers. I'd add Kathy Griffin to the list of negative-attention-whores... but she delivers 'the funny' at least sometimes.