The House of David

"all your cities lie in dust"

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The weblog as extended memory


I don't use this blog, primarily, as a means for influencing people. I don't like people enough to do that.

I use this blog as a memory dump. It stores what I know at any given time. (Even if that "knowledge" was false: c.f., the Torah's opinion on unborn life.) If I read an article and disagree with it, I can search through the archive and dig up what I'd said on that subject in the past.

It's nice not to have to keep this clutter in my head.

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posted by Zimri on 00:28 | link |

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Not crying


It's been a month and a day since I restarted this blog, and some observers may be thinking that "cry for help" has become a theme. I invoked it for The Cão. Then I supported Sullivan's invocation for Nidal Hasan. I could be on someone's shortlist for an intervention.

It's okay, really.

Today was a good day. I had free food, or nearly, all day. Work went well. Went to the Houston Dot Net User Group this evening and learnt a few things. They held a raffle, in which I won a 1 TB external hard drive (yes, that's T for Tera).

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posted by Zimri on 22:01 | link |

Monday, November 02, 2009

Apostasy and tribalism


The Jawa Report has a quote from Wafa Sultan about how she's being treated as a Muslim apostate. Rusty, the commenter, then compares that to how Mormons treat their apostates (nerf-bat harassment) and Fundamentalist Christians theirs (passive-aggressive threats, shunning).

I am not about to belittle the Muslim penchant for violence, which is real and terrible. But it's not what these religions do to their apostates which hurts the most.

The trauma comes when you find out that your former friends - Muslim, Mormon, Christian, whatever - only ever saw you as another mark in the tally.

If you lived your life for your friends, and then a theological disagreement causes you to be harassed or shunned: you learn quickly that all you did for your friends, didn't matter. They never cared about you as a person. You may as well be dead to them.

Is the shunning worse than death? I'd prefer the shunning, myself, but then I've been called a sociopath on several sites. Most humans are social creatures.

Anyway Islam seems to offer the death along with the shunning. That makes the question somewhat moot.

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posted by Zimri on 18:10 | link |

The deadliest sin for a blogger is sloth


I got lazy last weekend. The laziness didn't start on Sunday; it started on Saturday. The two posts I did then, I had started on Friday. On Sunday I had nothing to do. One could put that down to a desire not to work on the Sabbath. But I'm not that hardcore of a Christian. And if I were, I'd prefer the Sabbath be observed when Jesus observed it - Saturday. This quietitude had no excuse; it was sloth.

Because I'm always up for adding to my list of shortcomings, I'll go with hypocrisy with this post.

I went hunting around for other secular Right blogs. I found the SecularConservative in Houston; and The Conservative Humanist Association, and (although this title's a mite more strident) The Atheist Conservative.

I can't put any of them in the sidebar. Janus at SecularConservative seems to be burning out. ConservativeHumanist hasn't been posting regular updates either. The Atheist Conservative does little but paste others' content lately. If they don't much like their own blogs, how far can a visitor like those blogs?

I don't think this says anything about secularists or the Right. There are also a-plenty of lazy religious believers; and it's not as if the Left quite gets its base of support from the Hardworking-American Community, either.

People just get into slumps where there is nothing to say.

For awhile I had a LOT to say, that I'd been sitting on for two and a half years, some of which I was NOT ALLOWED to say (and it wasn't just that one external force). I don't know that I've said it all, yet.

I'll let you know.

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posted by Zimri on 16:30 | link |

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Weather advisory for Harris County


This is what we've got coming for us:

Updated: 3:40 PM CDT on October 29, 2009
Wind Advisory in effect until 6 PM CDT this evening...
Flash Flood Watch in effect through Friday morning...
Tornado Watch 782 in effect until 9 PM CDT this evening...

Niiiice.

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posted by Zimri on 18:44 | link |

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Yay, flu shots


I had a flu shot yesterday (not H1N1 - this was the vaccine for the normal flu). It made my right forearm sore. Now I feel sore all over and a little headachy.

Bah.

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posted by Zimri on 16:40 | link |

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Overheating


I've been battling bit of writer's block lately. Today the gates opened a bit more. But, just my luck, it is too hot here (Gulf Coast) for me to handle a full essay. My brain functions poorly when the temperature runs above about 80 F.

There are other essays I started to write late last Friday but they require research, and THAT requires that my brain works. Of the posts today, two were adapted from comments I left elsewhere when it was cooler; and two others were barely more than link-dumps. I kept all of it to subjects I could handle in short, controlled bursts.

Alastair Reynolds in Redemption Ark, part of a saga I've been remiss in not reading until now, has a character named Skade. Skade has no hair, but her parents genetically engineered a fleshy crest upon her head. The crest distributes heat from her head, much as the Dimetrodon during the Permian had a crest to distribute heat from its spinal cord.

Times like now, I'm envious...

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posted by Zimri on 18:36 | link |

Monday, October 12, 2009

... and then they came for me


I've had to deliver a few apologies over the weeks. (What the hell - decades.)


If theorem T seems objectively true, even if T has been demonstrated to the limit, there sometimes remain people who still won't see the truth of T - to a part of me, these people have ceased to be people. They have become a problem: a mathematical singularity, or at any rate an algorithm gone NP-complete.


I have to remember to step back and to remember that these people are, still, human. More human than me, a humanitarian would argue. I've shared my worries on that, over five years ago. Nothing much changes in human nature.


What might change is how I deal with the buggy software in my own head rather than fantasising about deleting everyone else from my life.


There is, or was, a large-ish sociology experiment on the 'Web, run by liberal jazz musician Charles Johnson. After 9/11/2001, he developed a community called "Little Green Footballs" - and then over the past couple years he placed ever more onerous restrictions upon that community.


One of his little roadblocks he set up in our little lizard maze: he declared for tyrant Zelaya in Honduras. At this point I wrote up an essay proving that L.G.F. was "anti-conservative". I figured I'd be quickly banned, or (much less likely) Charles would post something to the effect "yeah; deal with it".


Nope. First the post lingered around and attracted "down-dings". I picked up 10. And Johnson's final comment to me, announcing that he was terminating my account there, got about 2 or 3 "up-dings".


I'd become a problem to that community, and the problem was solved - to rejoicing all around.


It was about what I deserved.

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posted by Zimri on 20:29 | link |

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Personal news


Still in good health, so there's that. Need to return to the gym though.

I found out about Asperger's. I haven't bothered taking a diagnosis. (It seems obvious.)

I'm Catholic as of the start of last year. Sort of. I'm baptised but in the Anglican Communion; I'd need years of reprogramming to be Catholic. Not sure that I can go through with it now; I've become more sharply secular of late. Insofar as I'm even capable of supernatural belief it would be Catholic.

New job. As of late 2007. So, not so new...

No major projects on the topics of the Bible or Islam.

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posted by Zimri on 23:00 | link |

Sunday, March 11, 2007

[last update for years]


I have survived cosmetic surgery on my scalp. For years, there was a fatty lump there which made me look like a cone-head. Now, I have a nearly shaved head and a small scar. I have returned to the gym, although I have fallen a little behind where I was last September (135 lb on the chest push, etc). In a couple of weeks I will finish Arabic II at Rice's Continuing Studies, basically the first half of Kirsten Brustad's textbook; I am one of two students who have lasted this long.




UPDATE 10/15/09: I found this in the blog archive on top of the last Blogger post. Apparently I'd downloaded the page and then uploaded it outside Blogger. Strange. I'm reposting this with the date-stamp I found on it...

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posted by Zimri on 20:21 | link |

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