My name is
David Robins:
Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner,
libertarian (voluntaryist),
and student.
This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.
A symbiotic dream world
Political ·Monday May 4, 2009 @ 00:09 EDT (link)
A thought came to me while watching Glenn Beck's Tea Parties: Media Lies Exposed show (link goes to first of five): the liberal media provides the service to liberals of perpetuating their dream world. In this dream world, they are the brave victims, conservatives are racists, conservative protests are bankrolled by Fox News, and more government is the solution to everything. It's symbiotic: the liberal media gives watchers a cozy reassuring fantasy world and keeps out unkind reality, and they watch it and raise its ratings and advertising revenues.
(It's possible that the conservative minority—some shows on Fox (forget talk radio, it's opinion and doesn't pretend to be news)—is guilty of the same thing, but if so, it's far less obvious, and less heinous coming from a minority of sources or a single source; and I'm also pointing out a particular case here where the attack machine either tried to ignore an event that would be noteworthy to an unbiased observer, or ground into full smear mode.)
Ack. I hate silly disclaimers.
There really is no compulsion in this religion
Political, Theology ·Sunday May 3, 2009 @ 23:28 EDT (link)
The reason there is no compulsion in worship in the United States Constitution is because Christianity is about free will. This is well stated in this post (not mine) to the Christians at Microsoft list:
People who read the constitution and view the absence of God as a reflection of the "secularness" of our founders miss the point. The reason our constitution is absent from any hint of compulsion to worship in any specified manner is a direct result of the religious beliefs of the founders and those they represented. They believed in an almighty God, but that the only acceptable worship of Him must be of free will. To try and force a man to worship God against his will would be a violation of God's own law.
This nation was indeed founded on Christian principles. Let me ask, when was this nation founded? When the constitution was signed in 1787? Or rather when we declared ourselves free on Independence Day: July 4, 1776? This declaration of independence does not attempt to define all the laws by which we should govern ourselves but it certainly outlines the reasons for the founding of our nation. These reasons are largely based on the Christian beliefs of the founders and those whom they represented:
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands… the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….
With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Their sense of this "God of nature", "equality", the one who gives all men "unalienable Rights" which no government can take away, and their "reliance on the protection of Divine Providence" came from nowhere else but their religious beliefs, which happened to be Christian. Even their sense of justice was immensely influenced by this. Our laws are based on this sense of justice which came from their Christian beliefs.
Don't get me wrong, they wanted nothing to do with a church/state theocracy as that was the type of system they had just freed themselves of, but they had no qualms about religious expression even in government. I think it was D. Prager who said "this country was founded to be free, not secular."
Re: Jefferson as a Deist. I never understood this claim, but I am admittedly not an expert. A Deist is one who believes in an impersonal God, like a watchmaker who wound up creation and left it to operate on its own. They do not believe in the personal interaction of God in the affairs of men. With this in mind, I am unable to fathom how a Deist could make comments such as this:
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; That a revolution of the wheel of fortune, a change of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by Supernatural influence! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in that event." (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII, p. 237.)
Perhaps he changed his opinion during some other time in his life, but it seems impossible for a deist to make such a statement unless he does so without belief in his own words. He also said this:
"I am a real Christian - that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ." (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, p. 385.)
Sunday shooting at SVRC
News ·Sunday May 3, 2009 @ 19:58 EDT (link)
Yesterday I ran two miles on the treadmill—got some blisters; it had been a while.
Today we went shooting at SVRC. We arrived near the end of the Black Powder group's event (as planned—I was curious as to what those events entailed); they were mostly packing up to leave as we arrived. One other person (Chris from Amazon) was shooting a Ruger 10/22 in the pistol pit; I shot a few magazines of 9mm in both the Glock 34 and Springfield EMP there and then we both shot the AR-15 in the rifle area. I tried earplugs (instead of normal outside "headphone" style ear protection); they were great; the other ear protection gets in the way when firing a rifle. After Chris left, we had the place to ourselves, which was surprising, since it was a beautiful day. We shot several magazines and then packed up and left, stopping to eat at Pickle Time in Duvall on the way home.
I ran a bore-snake through the AR when we got home, and then mixed up some lawn weed and crabgrass killer so I could spray tomorrow.
Surgical one-upmanship
Political, Humor ·Sunday May 3, 2009 @ 13:43 EDT (link)
Three Californian surgeons were playing golf together and discussing surgeries they had performed. One of them said, "I'm the best surgeon in California. In my favorite case, a concert pianist lost several fingers in an accident, I reattached them, and 8 months later he performed a private concert for the Queen of England."
The second surgeon said, "That's nothing. A young man lost an arm and both legs in an accident, I reattached them and two years later he won a gold medal in track and field events at the Olympics."
The third surgeon said, "You guys are amateurs. Several years ago a woman was high on cocaine and marijuana and she rode a horse head-on into a train traveling 80 miles an hour. All I had left to work with was the woman's hair and the horse's ass. I was able to put them together and now she's Speaker of the House."
Is it still a 100-year flood if it happens twice in a month?
News, Humor ·Saturday May 2, 2009 @ 22:14 EDT (link)
To: Duvall MS Employees; Monroe MS Employees
Subject: 2 bedroom rental house on our farm opening up May 1st
It seems the 2 bedroom rental house on our farm opening up May 1st. This house comes with a small detached garage and a pretty good sized yard.
This house only opens up once every couple years.
The rent is $1000 per month. I pay water, sewer. They pay electric, phone, garbage. If you know someone you would personally recommend who may be interested please let them / me know.
Reply to above post:
You forgot to mention the free 100-year floor rinsing every 2 months :)
(For those not in Duvall, we got a lot of "100-year" floods in a very short timespan not long before the posting, and the house in question is in a low area that floods early and often.)
Edging; AR-15 case
News ·Saturday May 2, 2009 @ 17:51 EDT (link)
Last night from when I got home until dark I ran the edger to clear the accumulated weeds between the patio stones, and destroy the encroachments of clinging moss; I also went around the lawn, front and back, and both sides of the rock wall at the back right, bordering the "private drive". It was fairly exhausting due to having to hold one arm straight out on one handle of the edger; the numbness from the vibration wore off fairly quickly but the ache from holding my arm locked and holding up the unit took longer. Part of it's due to not having edged since last year, I'm sure. Removing moss with an edger is probably more work than with a power washer, but not too bad for small areas.
Today I went to the gun show in Monroe; Surplus Ammo and other bulk dealers were out of Wolf .223, so I'm placing an order with Wideners. I still have most of a case of 500, so I can wait. I also picked up a soft case for my AR-15: it's 36" and the rifle is 32" collapsed, which is a good fit; it's also deep enough to hold it with a magazine attached or with an optic (when I get one). There are four magazine pouches on the outside: I guess I need to buy another magazine.
Books finished: The Rolling Stones.
Anarchism
Political ·Saturday May 2, 2009 @ 14:18 EDT (link)
I joined a Facebook group Anarchism: Anarchist Ideals In Practice not because I'm an anarchist, but because the group says they'll send out related articles, and I'm curious how anarchism could work and their perspectives on various issues.
It seems to me that in many situations (e.g. contractual disputes, crime), an anarchist group would need a way to mediate disputes and enforce security, otherwise violence becomes a means to take land and property, and anarchists disclaim that they are for violence. Enshrine this security and mediation in a group agreement—and pay those doing the work of security and adjudication fair wages—and bingo, you've formed yourself a small government. And I'm very much in favor of small government, and as in my previous note, subsidiarity.
Subsidiarity
Political ·Thursday April 30, 2009 @ 23:10 EDT (link)
Subsidiarity is a great principle. The dictionary definition is just "of secondary importance" but as a legal and political principle it means that "matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority" (also). I found it in one of Murray's books; probably the one I'm (paused in the middle of) reading now: In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government*. It's a great handle for a very good idea: everything should be as localized or decentralized as possible, but no more so. I had cause to use it in this infinitely long Facebook thread with Tom about my Taxation is theft status.
* I was copying some of the links for this post from Google, and it kept inserting an extra level of redirection through Google (even though the status bar had the original link, copying had the Google cruft). Fortunately, GreaseMonkey to the rescue: there's a script to fix it: Fix links in personalized search.
Books finished: The Game-Players of Titan.DVDs finished: Saw V.
Random characters in virtual console
News, Technical ·Tuesday April 28, 2009 @ 23:36 EDT (link)
I rebooted cirith-ungol (the MythTV box) today because the power went out, and when I tried to switch virtual consoles (ctrl-alt-f[1-6]), it started spitting out random characters including a lot of question marks. It turns out (after much hair-pulling) that it's probably this Gentoo bug: console Unicode support is broken (damn furriners and their chicken scratchings they call writing!… if ASCII was good enough for Moses and Paul, …, etc. etc.). The following (substitute virtual console number for X) will fix it for you (and you may also need to set unicode to NO, or comment out the line, in /etc/rc.conf).
kbd_mode -a -C /dev/ttyX
echo 0 > /sys/module/vt/parameters/default_utf8
Books finished: Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America, Men In Black.DVDs finished: Montana Sky, 1408, Rio Bravo.
Broadstripe adds insult to injury
News ·Friday April 24, 2009 @ 19:45 EDT (link)
You may remember Broadstripe, our ISP, from my last paean, Broadstripe, the worst ISP in the world. They've been better lately with outages (I keep track of downtime using a process that pings every minute; for April, they're at "1.42% (8:06/571:49) total downtime", which about as well as they've been doing for the last several months, and half what it sometimes was; there also have been less long outages).
However, they recently sent out a letter apologizing for last Friday's service outage, blaming it on their UPS and saying they're upgrading: the usual lies that service providers tell customers. But the icing on the cake was:
To show our commitment to the communities we serve, in lieu of a billing credit, Broadstripe is donating $10,000 to the United Way of King County on behalf of our customers.
Wow. What a slap in the face. I wonder how they'd feel if I decided to donate $100 to the NRA in lieu of paying their invoice? This is under the signature of "VP/GM Broadstripe" Tom Martinson.
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