Dark Brightness

I want to reflect on two parts of today’s readings.

Mark 3:7-19a

7Jesus departed with his disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him; 8hearing all that he was doing, they came to him in great numbers from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, and the region around Tyre and Sidon. 9He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so that they would not crush him; 10for he had cured many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him. 11Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, “You are the Son of God!” 12But he sternly ordered them not to make him known.

via PC(USA) – Devotions – Daily readings for Monday, March 1, 2010.

One of my sons has been playing Civilisation and Grepolis. He commented that you wanted one culture, one set of morals to win in the game. Neal Ferguson, in his history of the long war (or short century, 1914 — 1990)  pointed out that the areas of greatest ethnic conflict were those where the groups were admixed.

The Boederlands were mistrusted. They had limited education. There was no prestige. Jesus was from there, and he is moving in power. But when the spirits opposing hims have to admit this, he silences them. He has been to the desert and he will not allow the cheap and spectacular to be the hallmark of his ministry. (To my Pentecostal friends, he heals. Thank G_d. However, he does not bang thr drum about it.

1 Corinthians 4:8-10

8Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Quite apart from us you have become kings! Indeed, I wish that you had become kings, so that we might be kings with you! 9For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, as though sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals. 10We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.

Paul was a Roman Citizen. He knew the protocol of the triuph. After the General, the slaves, the booty, the army… came the leaders. In shackles. They were led, from the froum, to the strangler. Paul is putting himself in the position of maximal shame. He is identifing himself with rubbish.

The world’s fashion is to say we should have self esteem and be at the front. (Interestingly, those with high self esteem do less weel than those without high self esteem).

And we preach triumph and prosperity. Here and now. Have we become fashionable, instead of faithful?

This is so cool. It may not be accurate, but it is soooo cool.

AGW_hockey_stick_graph_big.gif (GIF Image, 1102×742 pixels).

Good article about Congress as the home of show trials. But this quote is a gem.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for saving the earth; it’s the only planet known to have bourbon

via A decline in Prius envy | The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment.

Some small thoughts.

• Jesus told this man to do what the Law commanded and get his cure for leprosy ritrually cleansed so he could rejoin society and corporate worship.
• Jesus said no publicity. This is unlike a lot of modern people, who proclaim the miraculous. Jesus, who was miraculous, at this point wanted to be able to go into villages.
• But he got too big. He had to stay in the country. People flocked to hear him

40A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” 41Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” 42Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 43After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, 44saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” 45But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

via PC(USA) – Devotions – Daily readings for Wednesday, February 24, 2010.

And doing good is a command. Doing good at times causes hassles in our lives. We should still do good.

Charles Stross is a good Scot. He writes science fiction, he used to be able to hack, and he travels. He also understands principles. Since he writes better than me… Go and read it, I can wait.

Here’s the rub: security is a state of mind, not a procedure. Procedures can't cope with attackers, because they're inflexible. If you search passengers for guns, someone will carry a knife. If you search for knives, someone will sew themselves a set of underwear full of PETN. And so on. To deal with a threat — say, someone who wants to attack your air travel infrastructure — you must look for the attacker, not their tools, because they can change their tools at will to exploit weaknesses in your procedure for identifying tools.

via Charlie’s Diary.

What Charles is comparing is the US versus the rest of the world on getting through an airport.

In most of Europe and Asia, you book in, and you go through a security screen and immigration  with your bag. When you get to the gate your bags are screened.

Multiple, parallel methods.

In the US, Auckland (which is horrible — I’d rather fly directly from Christchurch or Dunedin to Australia) there are many flights going through one or two screeners and people doing rote searches. Clearly bored. Not interacting with the tourists.

He was worried about the risks of the queues. My issue is “why?”

I’ve two suggestions.

1.  NZ and Oz are islands with a large agricultural industries. We have to screen for contraband such as pests. We got used to using multiple Xray machines DECADES ago. Plus dogs walking around — because we cannot afford to lose our exports.

2.  In much of the world Tourism is a big industry. The tourist experience begins on the plane, and on landing first impressions count. It does not take much to teach staff to smile. It takes a little more to teach staff to interact and observe. (Which is what Israel does — and they are the experts on security).

The US? Had some good times there… (though travelling through upper Georgia with my Kiwi Chinese ex was interesting). But there an assumption that it is a privilege to have people arrive in officialdom, not a realisation that people can go somewhere else…

And there are consequences. I set my flights up to Avoid the USA. I do not go to learned conferences in the US. It’s not worth the hassle. And it is probably safer.

Bibliography issues are difficult. Particularly when working with others who do not use openoffice. Zotero 2.0 is now out, and useful. I’ve installed it today on the work ‘puter and the home ‘puter.

What’s good.
1. Plugins to open office work.
2. I can sync bibliographies
3. Imports my old Bibtex files
4. Has the most common citation systems up and working.

What’s bad…
The word processor plugin that is cross compatible requires you save in .doc format. The open office only version is NOT cross compatable. As most medical editors require word, this is an issue.

Best advantage — is a firefox plug in and is a free firefox plugin.

We don’t need endnote no more.

Site is at http://www.zotero.org/

Have moved to a glass-like theme with one border for widgets and a clean text look. Allows for insertion of pictures.

The teenagers think it is cool, which is probably a bad thing. Oh, and I have updated to Wordpress 2.9.2

This is the second post today about the idiocy of hollywood. In addition to annoying DVD ads, if this is right. we will not be able to use analog to watch blu-ray using component audio.

Which is another reason not to get a goddam blu ray device in the first place. Or to use pirated disks.

Even existing Blu-ray players, even the one you may have sitting underneath your TV right now, will be affected, thanks to a lovely little piece of technology.After January 1, 2011, the producers of Blu-ray disks will be able to include an “Image Constraint Token” with any Blu-ray disk which will disable HD over component video, limiting it to a 480i/576i resolution – even though your player is perfectly capable, and bought well before the cut-off date. They want to ensure that HD content only runs through HDMI.In their provisions, the AACS LA actually refers to all this as the “Analog Sunset”.What makes this so much more incredibly frustrating than it already sounds is that this won't prevent copying of Blu-ray discs in any possible way, since AACS has already been cracked wide open long ago, and has been spread across the internet. In other words, this nonsense only affects normal consumers, who will see that their expensive Blu-ray players, connected over component video contrary to popular belief, HDMI doesn't have to be better than component, will suddenly start playing SD content. It's doubly frustrating for countries like my own, where personal backups are perfectly legal.

via 2010: Analog Sunset, the End of Component Video.

I like the comment from the professional installers webside:

We make no bones about calling out Hollywood studios on their ignorance, anti-market practices and general thick-headedness. These AACS rules are especially frustrating because they, like those FBI and anti-piracy warnings on discs, only affect users intending to legally copy software to a local hard drive. The AACS rules will have absolutely zero effect on actual piracy since the Blu-ray Disc’s AACS/BD+ system has already been broken and spread far and wide across the Internet.

Anyone can copy a BD disc and play it back over analogue outputs.

You just can’t do it legally. And there’s the rub.

Well, I am reaching the point where I am ignoring hollywood. As a fairly patriotic New Zealander, I despise Helengrad (Wellington) where Weka lives: the movie industry is in bed with at least one criminal organisation, promoted by Tom Cruise etc, and they are making any audio or videophile’s life hell. All those lovely burr-brown DACs we use to turn things into analog (which always has higher quality) — useless.

Folks, Go Galt. Ignore Blu Ray. By second hand disks. Don’t go to movies, Starve the beast until there is some humility, or Hollywood dissolves into multiple movie centres, producing smaller, local product.

I have three degrees from the University of Auckland — which is unsurprising since I grew up there. David Farrar and Chris Trotter have linked to this paper.

I have (over the years) seen much nonsense taught — generally in less competitive faculties.  However, this is in law, and this course is propoganda. I argue with Crhis Trotter a lot, but this fisking is quite accurate.

A swift perusal of the course description told me all I needed to know. Here, as I feared, was a particularly stark example of what I call “Self-loathing Leftism” – that self-critical mode of left-wing analysis which takes “the politics of victimhood” out of its more familiar context in the anti-racist, feminist and gay rights movements, and extends it to the whole world.

The result is as predictable as it’s banal: an Avatar world of Goodies versus Baddies and Nature versus Technology, in which the holistic philosophy of innocent and virtuous indigenes crashes into the murderously exploitative intentions of malignant and rapacious colonisers.

Just take a look at the opening sentences of Colonialism to Globalisation’s course description:

“In the late 15th century, imperialist Europe emerged intent on exploring and possessing the New World. Fast forward through five hundred years of colonialism, capitalism, slavery, industrialisation, genocide, and international law and greet the 21st century in all its paradoxical glory.”

There’s so much wrong with this statement that it’s difficult to know where to begin.

For a start, there was no such thing as “imperialist Europe” in the late-15th century. The only entity worthy of such a description at that time was the empire of the Ottoman Turks – whose steady expansion into southern and central Europe was only halted at the gates of Vienna in 1529.

Indeed, it was the Ottomans’ interruption of the trade flows between Europe and Asia that prompted the monarchs of Portugal and Spain to sponsor voyages of exploration westward, into the Atlantic Ocean. Their hope was to access the silks and spices of the “Indies” from the sea. Nobody knew the “New World” was there!

As for Course Co-ordinator, Moshen Al Attar’s, “fast-forwarding” of the next five hundred years: what can one say?

Let’s start by listing the things he left out: the Renaissance; the Reformation; the Enlightenment; the American and French Revolutions; the exponential growth of scientific knowledge and technological expertise; the expansion of democracy; the abolition of slavery; the emancipation of women; the defeat of totalitarianism; the birth of the United Nations; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (And this list barely scratches the surface.)

We can only assume that Mr Attar’s justification for bracketing “capitalism” with “colonialism” and “slavery” is because he sees it as being emblematic of the Western World’s lust for conquest and its colonists’ pathological need to demonstrate racial and cultural superiority.

But, to hold up capitalism as a purely Western construct is to engage in precisely the same ethno-centrism his course condemns. For most of human history it was the manufacturers and merchants of East and South Asia who controlled the global economy. And they projected their reach and protected their profits no less ruthlessly than their Western counterparts.

For a brief historical era – a period spanning less than 250 years – the West’s weapons, and their more dynamic mode of economic organisation, permitted it to expand its influence across the globe. But the same could easily be said of those emphatically non-Western expansionists, the Mongols.

Europe’s “imperialists” were not the first to practice slavery and genocide.

They were, however, the first to make both practices illegal – not only in their own jurisdictions, but by the steady development and extension of international law, across the whole planet.

via Bowalley Road.

The old moralists would have described the content of this course as being driven by one of the seven deadly sins — envy. What I am seeing is projection — the ongoing difficulties of the developing and regressing world (Somalia, Zimbabwe etc) are being projected onto Europe as sins of colonialism.

Which is Bullshit. When Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, it was an agricultural exporter. People are now starving after 30 years of mismanagement and corruption courtesy of Mugabe.  The British introduction of English (the language) has allowed a trading language without ethic baggage in India (Hindi is seen as far too aligned to a certain political position to be acceptable in the south).

And finally… if a student challenges Dr Atta, citing chapter and verse and does not get the grade appropriate to his argument… Dr Atta should be held to account — or have his course revised.

Preferably be the engineering and medical faculty — where postmodernism has been found wanting.

During the industrial revolution, miners carried canaries with them. If the canary fell over, they knew the air was full of mine gas — which could not only smother them but would explode of there was a spark.

Let’s look at part of today’s reading.

Ezekiel 39:21-29

21I will display my glory among the nations; and all the nations shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid on them. 22The house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God, from that day forward. 23And the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity, because they dealt treacherously with me. So I hid my face from them and gave them into the hand of their adversaries, and they all fell by the sword. 24I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and their transgressions, and hid my face from them.25Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob, and have mercy on the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for my holy name. 26They shall forget their shame, and all the treachery they have practiced against me, when they live securely in their land with no one to make them afraid, 27when I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them from their enemies' lands, and through them have displayed my holiness in the sight of many nations. 28Then they shall know that I am the LORD their God because I sent them into exile among the nations, and then gathered them into their own land. I will leave none of them behind; 29and I will never again hide my face from them, when I pour out my spirit upon the house of Israel, says the Lord GOD.

via PCUSA – Devotions – Daily readings for Saturday, February 20, 2010.

What does this mean? If we take this as read it implies:

• God’s glory is displayed in the restoration of Isreal.
• Isreal will not be destroyed.
• God will pour out his spirit on Isreal.

It also suggests that antisemitism is a good acid test, for those doing what is right generally support Isreal. If you don’t like this, you have to spiritualise it: but Ezekial did not do that.

Or you have to say Ezekial was a madman — but the Ancients could quite readily distinguish the madman from the prophet. The ancient penalty for falsr prophecy was death.

And… if you Beleieve Ezekial was a prophet, it is hard to accept Muhummad. who was overtly antisemetic, is one. It also hard to accept those who support the goals of Islam (the modern “useful idiots”) are acting on the side of the right.

And to those who say “by their fruits you will know them — There iwere two  prosperous, democratic countries in the middle East. Isreal and Lebanon. After the Lebanese takeover (de facto) by Hezbollah, there was one country. (We hope that Lebanon and Iraq may also return to democracy) — Israel.