When a Church Is a Business

Posted on March 9, 2012 by ehurst

The overlap between churches and businesses can be very entertaining during these hard economic times.
First, let’s establish once and for all, I am wholly and completely unsympathetic to folks who somehow believe tangible property is important to Christian faith. Western Christianity has long confused the Two Realms, having absorbed the heresy of Thomism and Aristotle’s fallacies, and does not realize there is a world of difference between ceremonial purity and spiritual purity. Aristotle assumed all things were a continuum, and that this universe is all there can be, whether we see all things or not. Ancient Near Eastern conceptions show a distinct break between the physical and spiritual; the two are entirely different categories. While the Spirit Realm overshadows and invades this realm, nothing here can touch what is there.
So this silly notion that a ceremony devoting some piece of real estate, with its facilities and structures, to God can make it genuinely sacred to God is asking for serious trouble. It’s okay if I say something belongs to God, because I intend to honor Him by how I use it. It’s not okay to then imagine He is somehow bound to honor that, when it’s entirely too easy for me to be misguided. And besides, if it’s His, he can dispose of it as He likes. Nothing in this discussion so far binds bankers or thieves (there’s a difference?) from messing with the property. It might be nice if they take it seriously, but I’d be a fool to expect it. Because when they don’t take it seriously, this silly notion about material things being sacred somehow makes God look weak if He chooses not to protect it.
Right now there is a huge spike on church facility foreclosures. While banks have traditionally been slow to enforce the contracts on churches, these mortgages are handled as commercial loans. God isn’t going to strike the bankers in His wrath simply because the congregation can’t pay the note. If you make a deal with the secular institutions, you get a secular response to your actions under the contract. God didn’t sign the contract; your members and representatives did.
Since every staff member of every religious institution in the world is fully capable of doing some of the awfullest things, things anyone regards as sinful, it should indicate how silly is the notion someone can put on their superman cape clerical garments and be treated differently. If anything, you should expect to be held to an ever higher standard, and at the very least, one which is internally consistent. The posturing gets old.
Jesus was once confronted by a fellow making lots of noise about following Him. Jesus warned the man He had no property, not so much as His own bed. Not that such lack hindered anything Jesus wanted to do, but that “wanted to do” included allowing Himself to be arrested and executed in grisly fashion. I’m waiting for all the religious officials to line up for that. Yes, I have room to talk, because I’m already in that line. It starts by freely proclaiming you don’t have to take me seriously.
Look for a lot of church poo-bahs to cast dark moral coloring on the banks and other financial institutions for doing what all of them agreed could and should be done when things get tough.

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Progressive Destruction

Posted on March 8, 2012 by ehurst

I’m going to pick on progressives today.
Basic fact: While individual barbarians can be civilized fairly quickly when immersed in a civilized society, all it takes is a small handful of them together to defeat the effort. You can explain in detail all you like about identity and reinforcements, and other whys, but this is a fundamental truth. Bringing aliens into any context, without a high degree of individual isolation encourages them to remain alien. All the nice theories in the world won’t change reality.
The reason we see so many social and political progressives insisting on encouraging mass immigration of cultural aliens is because they regard their own dominant culture as alien. If they weren’t so intent on forcing the rest of us to be like themselves, they would never be willing to accept alien invasions. Notice they always expect these aliens to embrace this progressive social agenda, even while pretending to encourage the aliens to keep their own. Some have gone so far as to formulate it as a bargain: You keep your distinctives, but add our little bit of ideas and we’ll work together.
What these progressives fail to understand is the aliens might verbally accept such a bargain, but then promptly ignore it.

Africans cannot be blamed for acting like Africans, Mexicans cannot be blamed for acting like Mexicans, and Arabs cannot be blamed for acting like Arabs. One simply shouldn’t be surprised when people who are not white Europeans do not act like white Europeans tamed by more than one thousand years of Western civilization…. The problem isn’t that Africans or Central Americans cannot ever be civilized or that there is a civilization gene, the problem is that like domesticating an animal species, civilizing an entire culture is a process that takes hundreds of years. Consider, for example, how long it took the barbarians of Britain and Germany to go from the naked pagan barbarism described by Julius Caesar to the heights of Christian civilization that produced Mozart and the chamber orchestras.

We really don’t care whether they look like us, but their actions are so utterly different. We can’t reasonably calculate six different sets of cultural signals when they all overlap into the same space so that we can live in peace. The very concept of “civilization” means a single, agreed upon set of signals, and the rules by which violence becomes acceptable.
If you imagine violence can become simply unacceptable under any terms, you have no business reading my blog. Most of us hate it, but we know it’s coming, and God Himself requires someone take charge and kill a few predators now and then, or chaos will most certainly be unleashed. The rules by which a civil society polices predators don’t work when the level of acceptable order is radically different among populations occupying the same small space.
The students in the story Vox quotes are barbarians by definition. Yet the place where they reign has a hopelessly idiotic government which simply assumes their way is so very much better, it is self evident even to the barbarians. Therefore, no citizen is permitted to defend themselves. They are required by law to accept the predations of the barbarians, because the State has declared they are not barbarians. If the barbarians are not violently restrained, there will soon be almost no one left but them.
As long as the rulers remain safe inside their enclaves, where the barbarians aren’t permitted to roam, nor citizens permitted to appeal for redress, this will only get worse. I can only wonder how far they can push the people before something in the civil foundation breaks down.
The only people who retain a progressive agenda are folks who don’t have to live with the consequences of their ideas.

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The Weakness That Keeps on Blessing

Posted on March 8, 2012 by ehurst

The vagaries of DNA and life experiences leave us with an array of weaknesses and advantages.
For the latter, we tend to run in two extremes. We either exult in our superiority, as if no other person can match it, or we make the mistake of thinking everyone can and should do it our way. It’s rare when a person realizes their unique situation is a means to making life somehow just a little better for everyone. Not simply missing the opportunity, but it’s human nature to be blind to the value of caring for others on a broad scale. It doesn’t take much self sacrifice to purchase a vast improvement in our own lives.
It is a hellish task for me to memorize anything by rote. During my years in mainstream Protestant ministry, I discovered the average human mind is capable of memorizing small patches of Bible text, whether in one concentrated session or spread over a week or so, with only 35 exposures to that passage. If you are trying to memorize it, all it takes is about 35 times trying and it sticks, typically for life. My brain won’t do that. It takes me a minimum of 75 for single sentences, and easily several hundred exposures for paragraphs.
My brain does not work in such small units as single words. If you ask me a question, immediately in my mind a full paragraph rises to my consciousness. I may not give you the whole paragraph, but it’s how my mind operates by nature. I typically think in whole essays, but the smallest unit of standard verbal processing for me is a substantial paragraph. In history classes, the only way I could memorize dates of pivotal events was by having a lot of them together in sequence. I had to already know a bunch of them, or there would be no place to insert that mental peg. I had to absorb history slowly, over years of learning.
On the other hand, I always think of history in terms of the broad sweep of things. I can read a history narrative text, and immediately see connections the author did not reference. Ask me a question later and I’ll see answers which lay waiting on me to check the links. My brain retains patterns first, then facts. Sometimes the patterns are false, because something is missing which clarifies, but adding another fact causes everything to shift and accommodate rather quickly.
Every experience, every time of labor at one vocation or another, always exposed to me the grand patterns by which the thing operated. I probably messed up plenty of details until I saw their place in the pattern, but I always saw the bigger picture before I understood my job very well. When it’s my turn to lead or manage others in anything at all, my first thought is to estimate how much of the pattern they need to be told first, and how to fill in the details and add more pattern. Because I am aware of this divergence from the norm, I always try to calculate how much pattern any person or group can absorb. I rewrite the whole thing on the fly as I probe where they are.
Oddly, it has made me easily accept the limits of others. Almost everyone, when you show them the patterns they can’t already see, seems to appreciate that help. It’s a rare person who can’t use the patterns I offer. I can sometimes sense when they need room to process, or when they simply can’t go any farther. Then I try to rewrite the program around that. I suppose part of that is my insistence the only thing which really matters is the people, not the presumed task. I won’t do anything if I can’t discern how it helps people.
I’m not prepared to discuss whether my pattern thinking is the cause or the result of my lack of ability for rote memory. I don’t think it matters. What I do know is people tend to love what I am able to produce with this weakness, so I keep trying to find ways to offer the fruit of it.

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Fantasies of Equality

Posted on March 7, 2012 by ehurst

The mere fact a woman can be raped proves they are not, and cannot be equal.
Anyone who is surprised military females are raped and silenced suffers even more fantasies, because this is utterly typical of how male troops act. If they did not act that way, they would be lousy troops. What makes them sharp and dangerous on the battlefield is what makes them a rape threat to any female. That is, given modern military structure and modern methods of warfare.
Obviously not all soldiers are that way, but a significant minority are like that because of our hideously stupid recruiting policies. You won’t get the good guys without that quota of predators and thugs. Further, the same guy is often capable of both under the right context.
Women are not and cannot be equal to men. Men are not and cannot be equal to each other. That’s because “equal” is politically defined, and it’s the one place where equality is utterly impossible, an old and established heresy. It’s not just a bad lie, but a damned evil one, a lie specifically designed to hurt people and destroy human life. People who go about insisting on political equality are evil, and they owe much more than a simple apology to the rest of us.
No amount of punishment and conditioning can possibly change the US military into a place safe for women to serve. The ugliest and most repulsive bull dyke would get raped if there weren’t easier and better pickings. It’s not a bad place for nymphomaniacs, but they’ll die young. Such is the nature of the beast, I can assure you, because I’ve been in the bowels of it. The ultimate meaning of what I saw was all too painfully obvious. Even then, I will tell you great things happened, as well. The rich opportunity for evil is the same opportunity for good. I don’t regret it, but I would never allow women to serve if I had a choice.
Women are different, precious in their own right as women. Not to be put on a pedestal, not to be catered to, but allowed to operate in their own way. Not according to our grand multi-layer cultural mythology, but according to the reality of what they are, and the sheer magic of how they actually do things. If I could never touch one again, like most men I would die rather than live in a world without them.
But women are not equal if equal means interchangeable.

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Historical Note: Women and Lust

Posted on March 7, 2012 by ehurst

It’s funny how people read their own cultural mythology back into history.

The Old Testament offers sufficient notice women are turned on by studly guys. Hebrew writers also recognized it wasn’t so much a man’s physical qualities as the power of his presence. Some have called it “physical charisma” or “animal magnetism”.

What the Hebrew Scriptures take for granted is a woman suitably impressed with a fellow might not say “no” if he approached her. In other words, it’s not her nature to resist much. So much did those writers take this for granted, they never bothered to mention resistance unless it was germane to the purpose of the narrative.

Only in our silly Post-Victorian Western culture would it seem more natural for a woman to resist. Throughout all of history, in most cultures where such a thing was discussed at all, it was taken for granted a woman could be moved to accept such overtures without a hint of tarring her with the slut brush. It’s the way women are. Sufficient social conditioning can dampen her appearance of willingness, but not her sense of enthusiasm. Only a genuine moral apprehension can change this.

Today’s poachers are successful because at some level, they know all this, and read a woman’s actual feelings. They see through all the pretense and mythology that women aren’t like that. Men who intend to build a stable home life will marry below their own sexual market value (SMV). Chances are good she won’t be much interested in other men when her husband seems relatively studly compared to what she might normally capture. Typically, women who marry men below their SMV are looking for someone they can manipulate and control.

As noted in my story “Pinch Me”, the way to overcome that is to demonstrate a different grade of manhood which creates a moral climate strong enough to claim her loyalty. SMV is not mere looks or charm. It is the man being as manly as possible in the particular fashion possible. Our hero was clearly in control of himself and offered the first measure of stability, strength and safety the gal had ever seen. In effect, he took the time to draw her attention to his true SMV. This is not mere theory; I drew the story from a combination of very real romances to which I have been a witness.

Insofar as a man might pursue a lady, this is what he’s actually doing. The complications make it difficult to explain in soundbites. Yes, it’s always up to the woman to decide if she is interested. In most cases, this happens rather quickly. Most women are more self-aware than Melissa about such things. She was grateful to Greg, and was responding according to her background, but actual interest in him took time. The average woman hasn’t lived such a past, and she is more likely to know what she believes she wants. The common self-deception is of a different grade entirely. Then you still have to wade through whatever social conditions and personality factors prevail in order to read her interest, or lack of it. All of this has to take place within the character folks have at the time, and self-honesty helps guarantee not getting entangled in something which won’t work at all because one or the other put up a false front.

For men already attached, the first thing to do is reevaluate your standing. Only those who have been fully conscious of the dynamics have little room for improvement. Guys, raise your SMV in whatever fashion is open to you. Be more the man you can be, and gain more self-control. Learn to wear your situation with comfort, taking things in stride, facing her weaknesses with aplomb. You can’t change her; only she can do that. You can change yourself and your responses. Only by a fairly strong act of will can you break out of old established patterns. Simply trying will show you are a better man than she thought.

The substance of handling any woman is whatever brand of power you can hold. If nothing else, the very minimum is being mysterious, keeping your mouth shut and avoiding talking about yourself. Don’t bluff unless you already know you are good at it. Dodge questions when you suspect direct answers will weaken your position. Allow false impressions to stand if they are harmless. Only the woman who surrenders to you has earned the privilege of knowing much about you. But however much you can, improve your SMV, which in her eyes is more a matter of power than anything else. It’s a combination of things, and can include as much physical presence as your DNA and workouts can offer, a sharpened intelligence and powers of observation-analysis (in terms of things you can say they didn’t realize you knew), self-control, and learning the difference between civility and slavish etiquette. Don’t beg for her favor; act like it really doesn’t matter to you. Take what she offers, but make sure you neither betray a dependence nor actually suffer from one.
The only man worth having is he who does not need her at all, but wants her anyway.

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"Pinch Me" Finished

Posted on March 6, 2012 by ehurst

Because of the juggling between blogging services, I’ve decided to post the entire story. You can find it here (site is gone).

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Reconsideration

Posted on March 6, 2012 by ehurst

Not that I’m trying to jerk folks around, but things aren’t working as I expected.
Besides, it appears WordPress may have decided they weren’t in such a hurry to take away the Dashboard from everyone. For now, they are keeping the original posting page and controls. This was the primary consideration for me, largely because of how I save my personal copy of these posts.
The other issue is I have managed to lose two posts I made on my hand-crafted temporary blog. I’m going to suspend that operation.
Instead, I’ll wait until the webmaster gets the SAFARI software working and I’ll shift to that for my political commentary. The social commentary and fiction will stay here for a while longer. I’m trying to narrow the focus here just a bit. Also, I’m getting out of the computer support ministry. With all the various operating systems going over the cellphone interfaces, it’s just no fun any more. Aside from real news on the computer OS front, there won’t be much about that here any more.
I even went through several hours researching other blogging options and services. I’m sure there are some obscure services out there which might suit me well, but I’m not sure it’s worth it to chase them down, given how search engines are so heavily editing their results these days. Many of the free services have switched over to paid, and several really good free ones have disappeared. Some are moribund and not actively serviced by their owners. I guess so long as WordPress doesn’t make any more dramatic changes, they’ll have the distinction of sucking the least. There just aren’t any really good ones out there easily found any more.
But to celebrate, as it were, I’ve changed the theme.
I apologize to my readers for the apparent indecision.

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My Last KDE Rant

Posted on February 23, 2012 by ehurst

This is the last time I’ll address this issue, because everyone knows the KDE developers and fans aren’t going to listen anyway. However, I’m pretty sure what follows is the sentiments shared by everyone the developers and fans are trying to ignore.
Obviously your minds are closed. For those who pretend you don’t understand, it’s only possible because you don’t want to understand. I’d use foul language but it won’t help you understand, so I’m going to state things clearly once and for all, and then you can stop pretending you care. Let’s start by defining the terms:
good software Good software is software that does what I want, the way I want to do it. Since no one can read my mind, there is obviously a certain amount of compromise between my internal standard of perfection and your standard of perfection when writing and packaging the code. Thus, “good software” is that which most closely approximates what I would have if I could write my own.
better software Better software is good software with fewer bugs. Better software does what it’s actually supposed to do according to claims and promises.
When KDE 3 reached a certain point in development, it became the ultimate for an awful lot of folks, on an awful lot of Open Source operating systems. I won’t try to nail it down to details; it hit the great middle ground of what a vast stretch of humanity actually wanted. It had a huge fan base. This despite being very buggy at times. Everyone I knew who liked it agreed with me if the developers would stop adding new features and just fix the bugs, we’d think we had died and gone to computer heaven. We were that much in love with it.
Then you developers just dropped it. We were heartbroken. You stopped fixing it and started crafting all these really new features we didn’t want and couldn’t use. You took something great and screwed it up completely. Many of us who loved KDE 3 hated 4; hate it still. I can’t pretend I know an actual count, but I have read more reviews of both KDE 3 and 4, and comparisons, from more sources than almost any human I know, plus a very large amount of personal comments. What the developers and current fans don’t get is that a really large portion of us will not ever like what you did, adding all these new features we utterly hate, and dropping the ones we really liked, and changing the underlying nature of how it works to something we refuse to touch.
Don’t ask for a list. That’s just an excuse to avoid the primary issue that you don’t care what we need. Not only did you never deliver on the promises of KDE 3, but you dropped it and moved so far away from it we wonder why you bothered to keep the same name.
KDE 3 was good for a thousand individual reasons, and we loved it as a whole. KDE 4 is different enough it might as well be everything we hate. We don’t care what you think is “better” or “improved”. The only “better” we would accept is “less buggy”. If you don’t understand how KDE 4 is not as good, we have to question your intelligence.
But the simplest answer is this: You don’t give a damn for what we KDE 3 fans liked about it. If you did, you would try to understand. Since you don’t, stop pretending you care. You are infuriating, nauseating, and your attempts to sell something which actually cripples our machines as some imaginary improvement is considerably worse than lame. I’ll type it one more time, slowly, so maybe you’ll understand:

KDE 3 was good because it came close to what we wanted. KDE 4 is bad because it’s so far away from what we wanted, it’s worse than no GUI at all.

When you can understand what is actually different between 3 and 4 in terms of user experience, you may actually have a clue about designing software people will like. Right now, the commandline is better than KDE 4. Further, I could care less how you react or label this kind of rant. You have made yourselves our enemies in many important ways. We will never forgive you.
I can already anticipate one intellectually dishonest response: “People hate change.” When “change” means fixing bugs, improving the underlying libraries, or making elements of the interface more consistent and not filling up the error logs with gigabytes of background chatter, we love change. When “change” means you promise to show us the moon, then board up our house with us inside, no we do not like it. I can’t imagine where you get your information from, but whomever told you it was good and right to arrogantly presume to re-engineer your users by attempting to force upon them changes in their computer habits, it’s time you went back and took a few courses which would help you understand why computers exist. If we are approaching Skynet, it’s time we hunted down every computer geek and shot them dead. If you understand computers exist to serve human needs, then perhaps you won’t be so arrogant. KDE 4 is not a Desktop Environment; it’s a cellphone UI. We want our desktop back. We liked KDE 3 because it came closest out of all the offerings to meeting us where we lived. KDE 4 is no better than GNOME 3, and the KDE Project has become more abusive and insensitive to users than the GNOME Project. Even Macheads get more respect from their supplier than you offered us.
All I’ve done is distill the complaints of literally hundreds of people who bothered to comment at all. Therefore, if you find you agree with the above rant, you may steal the whole thing and copy at will, posting wherever you like and sign your own name. More than anything else, I want folks to blast this message in-your-face with the idiots who keep pretending they just don’t understand, as if there could not possibly be a valid complaint with KDE 4.
Addenda This is an aging post someone linked somewhere. I just wanted to note I’ve already reviewed the Trinity Desktop Project, and love the idea.

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Last Post (Mostly)

Posted on February 23, 2012 by ehurst

Update: Change of plans.
============
This blog has been moved to here temporarily (domain is now closed).
The link takes you to a standard static XHTML page on my server account. With my usual impatience, I have made the move despite things not being exactly ready. The webmaster is still working on the details of setting up the blog to which I’m moving operations from here. (Hey, the guy has a day job.) This post will be changed to reflect the new reality when reality elsewhere moves to match my hopes.

So for those of you seek a continuation of my brain splatter, this is not the place to find anything new.

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Word to Women: Get Used to It

Posted on February 21, 2012 by ehurst

Women can wish all they want, and demand as much as they care, but they cannot change human nature.
Men are hardwired to check out your appearance and rate your sex appeal. Whether speaking to your or not, this is what’s going on in the background. If not, it’s probably because he’s almost dead. Plenty of men deny it, but that lie is simply the result of social conditioning. Women are doing the same thing, but on a different wavelength. Most people are able to keep that sort of thing to themselves as part of the internal noise we all have. The point is, you had better get used to it at the very least. If you are the least bit intelligent, you’ll take advantage of it in some way.
Men are hardwired to look. If you expose it, their eyes will travel there. Nobody should have to explain that. Even if they would never dream of touching you, are totally intimidated and crawling at your feet behind you, or if they hold you in utter contempt, their eyes will go where the goods are on display. Cover up if it bothers you, because even that sophisticated “to-die-for” rock star is doing all this in the back of his mind.
If you cut your hair like Jamie Lee Curtis, you are broadcasting a message men should avoid you. If you think about it at all, you probably did it as a response to female chatter. If you really had any notion about sex appeal, short hair is an epic failure. Get used to it. Even if you have good therapeutic reasons for cutting it short, there is a high statistical probability any man who says he likes it lying or is queer. Hardwired into the male psyche: Women who are otherwise a 10 lose 2.5 points for short hair. Lesser women lose even more.
The reason so very many women struggle with romantic relations is this vast load of manure-grade mythology and fantasy reflected in the likes of Chick Flix. If you thought Sex and the City was a revelation men should watch to understand women, all it proves is how utterly self-deceived you are. Women are nothing like that, despite their overwhelming wish to be so. Some men who know better will pretend an interest in such things only so long as it offers a chance to score with you. Then they’ll dump you as soon as they get tired of you, which may be the next morning. Men who don’t know better will play the game and deliver themselves entirely in your hands and you will never quite understand why you despise them for it. But it’s because the honest part of you kept chained in the basement is bigger and stronger than you’ll ever imagine, ripping apart the very floor on which you stand.
A perfect gentleman he may be, but if he isn’t undressing you with some part of his mind, he has no testosterone. Even a flaky old man like me, with no significant libido, having only ever touched one woman my entire life — I still have that motor running somewhere in the basement. This is normal; adapt to reality. The only way to avoid this is to avoid males.

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