Month: October 2006

” I’ve learned there are three things you don’t discuss with people: Religion, Politics, and The Great Pumpkin.”

Linus Van Pelt

Note: Situations have changed. Pearlman’s Jewelers now charges a premium for man-made diamonds due to high demand by environmentally and politically-conscious consumers. So they are still 100% diamonds, still artificial, but no longer cheaper.

Yahoo provides a glowing review of Adia Diamonds, the new, laboratory-produced diamonds.

I see several reasons for purchasing these over traditional diamonds:

• They are identical to mined diamonds
• I’m not paying the artificially high price of De Beers cartel diamonds
• I’m no supporting the South African diamond-mine slave trade
• I’m not funding any wars against African tribes
• They are cheaper

Now, if I could only find a local retailer…

For more good reasons not to accept natural diamonds, check out the top ten reasons why you should never accept a diamond ring, and more information about how the De Beers corporations manufactures scarcity in Have You Ever Tried To Sell A Diamond?.

For Firefly fans (like Christy and me), you might enjoy this montage of action scenes from the Firefly series and “Serenity”…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6BxuX52Tq4

Try and type in your own name. I was pretty amazed at how accurate and detailed their list is.

http://www.zabasearch.com/

I’ve re-enabled theme selection for all registered users. The selection is, umm, minimal at the moment.

If you want more selection, please peruse the list here and make a suggestion: http://drupal.org/project/Themes

Limitation: one theme per person. And I may elect not to allow a particular theme because I don’t like it or it presents technical difficulties!

You can get to your themes by clicking “my account”, then the “edit” tab. The available themes are on the bottom.

Register.com is apparently the recipient of either a denial-of-service attack on some of its DNS servers, or a colossal screw-up by one of their sysadmins. This means that a lot of web sites — any registered with them — will probably be temporarily unavailable until they can rectify the situation.

That includes mine.

Sorry for the downtime. My server is fine, the web sites are fine, it’s just the name lookup service that’s messed up.

–Matt B.

*John “Jack” Bolt, who went to his final reward in 2004, was the only two-war U.S. Marine Corps ace. As a junior officer during World War II, he scored six enemy kills while flying the Vought F4U Corsair. As a major during the Korean War, he scored six more while flying the North American F-86 Sabre on an exchange tour with the U.S Air Force.

Jack Bolt was a hoot! During a commercial airline flight several years ago, he was seated next to a young mother with a babe in arms. When the baby began crying during the descent for landing, the mother began nursing him as discreetly as possible. Jack pretended not to notice and, upon debarking, he gallantly offered his assistance to help with the various baby-related impedimenta.

When the young mother expressed her gratitude, Bolt responded: “Gosh, that’s a good looking baby and he sure was hungry!” Somewhat embarrassed, the mother explained that her pediatrician said nursing would help alleviate the pressure in the baby’s ears.

Jack sadly shook his head, and in true fighter pilot fashion exclaimed, “Damn! And all these years I’ve been chewing gum.!*

Yesterday, the former leader of a splinter group from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was executed by lethal injection for the slaying of a family of five in 1989.

Articles: http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/lundgren/index_1.html http://www.axcessnews.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=11662

I thought this random tidbit of information would be irrelevant to me. I thought there’d be no reason for me to care, much less post, about the execution of a small-time cult leader who killed some of his own followers for questioning his judgment. I never knew the guy, nor do I know any of his flock.

But it strikes home for me.

September 11, 2001, I rode the bus, as usual, to work for a foundering, tiny software company called Talk2 Technology, Inc. Eventually, they laid off 95% of the staff and reinvented themselves as a company called “Spontus”. Icky name. Anyway, I arrived at work as was my usual habit, right around 6:30 AM and got started working.

My boss dropped in a half-hour later and said, “Follow me. You have to see this.”

He took me to the break room, where a half-dozen of us were clustered around the big-screen television set to watch the image of two towering skyscrapers aflame. A second plane had hit the towers just moments before I arrived in the room, and it had been caught by news cameras, the scene being replayed over and over again, with picture-in-picture and commentary on the spectacle.

The World Trade Center, on a normal day, housed over 50,000 people. I thought for sure the majority were dead. I was surprised to find out that the final death toll, including those on the airliners and in the other buildings which were hit, was so much lower.

I’m sure most of us remember where we were and what we were doing when that tragedy struck.

I did a lot of soul-searching during the months after that day. Once we got a better picture of who the men were who committed this heinous act, and their religious motivations, I eventually came to a series of stunning realizations about myself and my religious faith.

I had sworn my time, talents, and everything I had, including my life, to obey a man. A man who called himself a prophet of God. Admittedly, the current leader of the Utah LDS church doesn’t act very prophet-like. Few solemn pronouncements of profound import. Fewer still radical doctrines or even major procedural changes. He’s more an administrator and a life-long bureaucrat and ladder-climber than the voice of the Almighty. And I was totally OK with being a faithful member of the church while recognizing the lack of prophetic power from the pulpit.

And yet I’d pledged my life to my Church, and the Church had as a core doctrine that the testimony of the living prophet was more important than any scripture. And I bought it all. I believed, fully and wholeheartedly. Until that time, I’d never allowed myself to question. I’d shelved my doubts. Had the opportunity come to give my life in service to my church, I’d have been grateful for the opportunity to serve and mindful of the glory which awaited me for my valiant death while in the service of God.

This man executed yesterday fervently believed he was a prophet of God. He gathered a small group of followers who believed the same. There is ample justification for murder in both the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon, and he played upon that, and his people’s faith in him, to justify killing five followers, three of them young girls.

And his flock went along with him willingly. Helped him by distracting the children while the parents were murdered before leading the girls to their deaths. Buried the bodies in the barn for their leader afterward.

In my studies and soul-searching, I eventually reached a point where I pledged to myself that I would never again accept any argument without analyzing it rationally. I would never again accept authority unquestioningly. I would nevermore allow myself to be convinced that any man — including a 2,000-years-dead guy named Jesus — is some conduit to God.

I’ve been repeatedly questioned by people close to me about why I made such an about-face five years ago. Now you know one small part of the story. The execution of this man brought back those memories like a sledgehammer, and reminded me why I refuse to cede my autonomy to anybody else’s judgment. Rejecting any earthly authority to dictate my spirituality enabled me to come to my own reasons for doing good, and I’m a better man for it.

Fair warning: the following post is adult in subject matter. If you’re my kids, hopefully you’ll be far too bored by this discussion to read further until you’re of an age when it’s interesting to you.

Actual title of this blog: “Porn Up, Rape Down”

http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu/Adobefiles/porn.pdf by Anthony D’Amato

ABSTRACT: The incidence of rape in the United States has declined 85% in the past 25 years while access to pornography has become freely available to teenagers and adults. The Nixon and Reagan Commissions tried to show that exposure to pornographic materials produced social violence. The reverse may be true: that pornography has reduced social violence.

Rather than being a topical pundit and conversation-leaner, I’ll let the paper stand for itself and post my own opinions in a day or two 🙂 If you’re going to comment, I only ask that you read the (brief) research paper before posting. Following your gut instinct may lead you to questionable conclusions.

Think there’s a correlation? Causation?

Okay.. there’s been a wrinkle. What if you had lived forever in a townhouse. What if, for 40K more you could have your first single family home with a yard.. and as an added bonus, your mother, brother, and sister lived four doors down and were offering free childcare?

What if it meant freedom to pursue things like acting, with the ability to go places at a moments notice.. but what if it meant your wife had to add 45 minutes to her commute?. What if it meant giving up a lot of your social scene, but solidifying your relationship with your siblings?

What if it meant you would need to come up with $400 more a month.. but had less chance of depreciating in a bad market.. and more chance of growing in a good market?

What if it meant you had to move further away, but could stay in the same (DC) market? What if it solved a dilemma you posted about, just days ago?

What would YOU do?