In Suspension

I have seven time counters.
(That’s a joke for you MTG geeks).

After some consideration I realized that one of the few things I own which cannot be replaced are the files on this laptop I now hold; a baffling amount of writing, essays, poems, shorts, and three novels, along with all manner of other important information (Starcraft I maps?). And with the laptop due for another backing-up and with no time at the moment to do it, the decision to leave my computer at home while I rendezvous with family in New York was an easy one. That, and the small amount of downtime I envision having.

That’s the reason why this Monday’s post is largely without substance, though I didn’t think I’d get to post anyway. Gadflies last week was a wash, but regardless of the disinterest of others, Jordan and I managed to pose some challenging arguments for and against God (most against, since Jordan did most of the talking) and the considerations (and refutations) of them are worthy subject matter for future posts.

Note also that there may be no post Monday, as the energy required to deal with family business may very will mix with intense travel time to produce a very heady drought. One that prevents me from the total consciousness required to deal with Intense Theological Issues (although I would like people to think about the validity of this argument; I’m almost ready to go back into it).

In these situations I try to leave everyone off with something interesting to read in the meantime. Teddy provided me with this, which seems like it might be trying to corner a market in a direction Google seemed to be going in. I am always amazed at the innocence with which Teddy shows me these things, as if I didn’t have enough things to waste my time with.

The other thing I’ve realized is that after two years of blogging, I don’t have any idea who my target audience is on this thing. Somehow I get hits. The causal connection remains wholly mysterious to me.

See you next week. Until then, may you discover nuances.

The Great Bible Quest, Update #1

CS Lewis is one of those people whose writing style is effortlessly eloquent, as if he somehow sat in the very fiery center of language itself and his thoughts themselves were made manifest into books. One of the many phrases I remember with fondness from the Screwtape Letters ocurred when Screwtape was contemplating going “from dreaming aspirations to laborious doing.” This is not unlike the task I previously set for myself, and the challenge of reading the Bible cover-to-cover is one that entices the casual book-worm with something along the lines of, “It’s just reading. You like reading. Just read…” The reading, however, is the sort of experience which always forces me to get substantially irritated with people who refer to the Bible as a “book.” It is not a book so much as a Tome; or better say library of tomes and be done with it. I am crushed by the weight of 40+ authors, and 66 combined books, letters, poems, and episodes, respectively.

While I have not given up, I remain woefully behind schedule (I neglect to say where), while Austin has no doubt cleared the books of Law by now. The good news is I have two six-hour plane flights next week, and am forcing myself to bring one and only one text. You guessed it.

For now, I will impart an observation that occurred to me during the whole episode of the plagues in Egypt.

A common criticism from non-Christians is that the old and new Testaments of the Bible portray completely different Gods. The Old Testament getting the wrath-and-vengeance God, while the New Testament getting the loving, merciful God. Like most claims of this nature, this one is fairly without ground.

First a simple argument. A loving father is one who cares about his children. As such, he is inclined to monitor his child’s behavior and punish. A neglectful father, on the other hand, would not care enough to do so. It struck me, reading through the Old Testament, that the God I was seeing was more or less a concerned father, punishing his children when they deserved it. I was punished as a child, and looking back, I see how I deserved it. But it is precisely the consequences-for-actions lessons that made me the moral  individual I am today. Critics look at the Old Testament God with an attitude that seems to say children should never, ever be punished for anything they do. Hate to see how their kids turn out.

The other thing critics attempt to claim is that the New Testament God is merciful, and the Old Testament God is not. Another bit of confusion that would be cleared up by actually reading Bible.

Numerous examples litter the Old Testament of God’s love and mercy:

• God said to Adam, if you eat of the tree, you will die. Adam ate of the tree. Instead, God cast them from the Garden and they lived for almost a thousand years.
• Cain murdered his brother, but begged that the punishment was too harsh, and God was merciful to him.
• Pre-Flood, the world was wicked, but “Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (Gen 6:8). Grace, as we see defined over and over in the Bible, is the state of getting a reward that you do not deserve. That is precisely what Noah’s family got.
• Perhaps the most potent example lies with Lot, a man who consistently and repeatedly sins despite fair warnings. And yet, God saves him. I remember reading it and thinking, “What an idiot, just leave him!” as if I were watching a movie. Given Lot’s track record, I certainly wouldn’t wait up for him. But then again, I don’t have infinite love like some people. In the context of Grace and Love, the decision to save Lot makes a lot more sense, now.

Almost every story in the Old Testament follows a pattern of, “Sin, forgive” on the parts of man, and then God, respectively. Go check ‘em out. It’s a little theme that I didn’t notice until after I made all the connections.

Anyway, off to bed. I’ll be in New York all next week, sans my computer, so we’ll see. If I post Monday it’ll be my last for a good seven, eight days.

Until then, may you make new connections.

———

Here’s another attempt at a schedule, since the last link didn’t work (although, I think it’s the same).

www.havenministries.com/schedule.pdf

(For some reason, copy-pasting this link into your address bar works just fine. I imagine it has to do with the fact that the PDF isn’t mine or on WordPress anywhere.)

Amazon’s “Kindle,” and the End of Freedom

By now I imagine most of you have heard about Amazon’s new exercise in absurdity, The Kindle.

I introduced and condemned the little piece of hardware in the more introductory article that ran in the April issue of the Viewpoints, which you can read on their website. What you are reading now is the article I intended to write.

At any rate, all you really need to know for now is that the Kindle 2 is an e-book reader, allowing you to store up to 1,500 digital books and read at your leisure.

The following video is off the Kindle 2 main page, and is good for some laughs. Where they dragged these people from, I don’t know, but they seem to have come from some alternative universe where books are actually carved into stone, with pages that require minutes of sweated straining to turn, and with writing that is cryptic and requires hours of studying to decipher. Nor do I know how much they paid them to say the kinds of things they do. Note their word choices and the way in which they articulate the difference between the Kindle 2 and “regular old books”; namely, they don’t (special, imaginative kudos to the wonderful argument made by the lady whose sole contribution consists in repeating the words, “it’s better than a book.”)

And don’t feel like you have to finish the video, or anything. It’s painful.

Tycho and Gabriel, mercifully, delivered the only suitable antidote (click to enlarge):

Anyway, as we move into the real heart of the issue, what’s important to note about the Kindle 2 is that it is not Wi-Fi powered, but rather is always connected Wirelessly to Amazon, in much the same way as a phone. You can’t disconnect it from the Amazon network, it’s always there. Keep that in mind.

Moving over to an an interview with the Washington Post, Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer remarked that, “there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.”

And this is a serious problem. Physical books enjoy certain conveniences unique to physical matter: You can lend, borrow or give them away. This is due to the fact that when you buy a book, you own it. It is yours to lend to friends, give to your children, donate to a library, take anywhere and read as often as you like. This is not true of Kindle books, which you do not actually own in any form, physical or digital. David W. Boles, a blogger at Urbansemiotic.com and Kindle 2 owner, noted that in the original model of the Kindle, there was an SD card slot, but this produced problems with Amazon’s ability to control content:

“The control issue I discovered,” Boles writes, “was if you moved a book to your SD card, Amazon could not remove the book from your Kindle. They could remove the book from your online storage and from the Kindle’s active memory, but if your content was on the SD card, Amazon could see it on your Kindle, but they could not remove or edit the content.”

This “problem” has since been corrected on the newer model of the Kindle, giving Amazon complete control over the books which were supposedly owned by the consumer.

“Make no mistake about it,” Boles writes. “You do not own the content on your Kindle. Amazon does.“

Meanwhile, on the Kindle homepage, Amazon states, “This is just the beginning. Our vision is to have every book ever printed, in any language, all available in under 60 seconds on Kindle. We won’t stop until we get there.” And when that happens, there won’t be any more books. If Ballmer is right in predicting the death of print, there will easily come a time, very soon, when all books, all newspapers, and all information rests, not in individual or even in public libraries, but in the hands of one or two companies. Imagine a world where everyone owns a Kindle, or equivalent, and there are no books at all. None. No newspapers. No magazines. Fascinated by their new portable library, consumers will give away their old books and magazines. No one will save newspapers anymore. Print will die, and all information will be in the hands of Amazon and its competitors.

And so we return to the ownership issue. With a company owning basically all printed information, and with no way to disconnect your Kindle from the Amazon network, the information can be changed and edited at will. If the company decides a book should not be available, out it goes. If some minority group decides that a particular author is racist, the text can be changed, updating it with more politically correct jargon. Upon realizing this I had flashbacks to the whole “controversial” issue surrounding the use of authentic dialogue in such authors as Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad (how would you like to crack open Huck Finn and see the words “African American?”). But aside from the disemboweling of great literature, the really disturbing point is that the Kindle also supports all major newspapers (and many, many more), magazines, and famous blogs. This is supposed to be convenient, but I don’t find anything convenient about the fact that this information is always at the mercy of the e-book distributors. Further, that changes to the content on your Kindle is untraceable. Why? Because you, the customer, do not own this material. You are paying Amazon to lease it.

Now, of course Amazon will deny all of this, because at the moment, they have no reason to control the world of information (that I can see of, anyway). They will point to all of these things as conveniences for the consumer, or else as necessities so people don’t cheat the company. Apparently, on the first Kindle, people could buy books, transfer them to their computers, and then ask for refunds, thus grabbing copies of e-books for free. I see and respect that as a concern for a company, so I’m not saying that Amazon is evil or setting out to conquer the world. But I believe what Ballmer said. It is very probable that print will die in the next ten years, and when that happens, whether intentional or not, the way of the future seems to put world information in the hands of e-book companies, and whoever might pull on their strings.

For now, though, they’ll keep bragging that they want every book ever printed and the utmost convenience for the consumer. But don’t expect that to last. No, one day when there are no more hard copies, odd things will start happening. Changes will take place. And when that happens, there will be nothing anyone can do about it.

So please, for the love of all that is holy, save your books, don’t purchase the Kindle, and spread the word.

EDIT: You may also enjoy reading the very concise point Cory Doctorow makes in his article, here.

Quest Accepted: the Bible

So pretty soon we’ll be returning to theology here at Truth is a Snare. Teddy and I (and maybe others) are embarking today on the first part of the Bible in 90 Days program/reading. You can download a PDF schedule here. In our case, however, we’re taking things a step up and doubling the amount of verses read per day, so as to finish the Bible from cover-to-cover in something like 44 days. It’s a relatively quick process and (once you get through Leviticus and Numbers) relatively painless. I recommend a full, informed Bible reading for pretty much anyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, for a multiplicity of reasons (including, but not limited to, understanding one of the foundations of Western culture and thought, literature, theology, and history).

Readers are welcome to follow along with us, and I’ll be posting up periodic notes and reflections that should prove useful to those of you who might have similar concerns/reflections.

So while the current trend of gloom-and-doom cultural observations rides itself out, expect frequent theological interjections.

And yes, one day we’ll actually get back to regular philosophy on this site.

Say Goodbye to Ownership

For whatever kinds of quasi-Marxism I tend to spiral into when nursing a drink into the thoughtful hours of the night, I have always believed in the power of competition. I mean, it’s a good formula: the kind of intuitive, commonsense idea that you can retreat to in comfort when the rest of the world stops making sense. Hence, the idea of a free market in a capitalist world was never something I disagreed with, contrary to the little group of people who have no doubt quietly labeled me a “commie.” Further, many people (I imagine, most people) have come to accept capitalism as the means to increase efficiency to maximum, like some sort of beatific reversal of Murphy’s Law. And with that, I cannot help but agree.

To a point, that is.

Increasing profit to maximum turns out to be a double-edged sword: pursuit of profit more often than not generates the useful byproduct of increased efficiency, but the problem is that this is only a byproduct. With the pursuit of profit as the primary focus, a company is not required to think of the good of the consumer or, far less, the good of society. The tobacco industry is the usual example for this sort of thing.

But as society moves unblinkingly into the new century, a disturbing trend begins to form in producer/consumer relationship, namely, a trend away from ownership.

In days of yore, when you bought a product, it was yours. You did whatever you wanted with it because you owned it. Now, however, it becomes increasingly more common to merely lease a product’s services for a monthly fee.

I first noticed this with games like World of Warcraft, with their monthly subscriber’s fee, something I ignored when I was mired in the game. But now, with almost six months between me and my last login, I look back with a disquieting feeling in my stomach, and think of how quickly $14.99 a month added up, and further, that I never really owned the game. When I stopped paying my virtual parking meter, the flowing realms of Azeroth sealed their doors to me. Of course it is easy to argue that this is common practice for the whole genre of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, it becomes disconcerting to look around at the rest of the world and see it invading the rest of the industry. Xbox LIVE, somewhere around the same time, tried to add this element to many games which, arguably, did not need them, and all to tempt players into signing up for a monthly fee.

But it’s not just video games, either. Cell phones have always required monthly fees, not much different than landlines, but this became more noticeable as the evolution of the phone resulted in the bizarre species of all-in-one digital Swiss Armies Knives with greater and greater monthly fees. The result is the same as with World of Warcraft: when I stop paying the subscription fee, my phone no longer serves its primary function.

Netflix is another company that only gives the consumers a product as long as the subscription is being paid; cancel it, and you are left with no tangible product whatsoever. Gamefly, being the video game equivalent, operates in like fashion.

Zune recently put out a new deal that offers unlimited downloads per month, so long as the subscription is met. While it is true that you are allowed to “keep” 10 of those songs per month, the haunting power of Digital Rights Management reduces such claims to mere rhetoric, reminding us yet again that though you purchase something, it is not really yours.

Last and most insidious is Amazon’s Kindle, whose diabolical agenda I detailed thoroughly in my article for Viewpoints a while back (an article which, by the by, is going to be re-written and posted here without the restrictions that were placed on me by the newspaper). In sum, while the Kindle has no monthly subscription rate, anything you buy is merely leased; you don’t own the books on your Kindle, Amazon does.

The point of all this is centered around the value of ownership. People who own things have power: they can re-sell, modify, or lend their possessions, given them total control over the thing they paid for. Whoever owns something has control over it, plain and simple. If the populace dishes out money but ultimately has no control, then we have a problem. One almost cannot help but be reminded of serfdom, in which peasants toiled on lands they did not own.

Make no mistake about it, paying a monthly subscription rate for a product that you never give the consumer is brilliant business; in the same way that renting a house indefinitely is better in the long-term than selling it for one-time gain. In the latter instance, you have to keep selling houses to continue making money; in the former instance, your product is essentially used over and over, with no expenditure on the company’s part.  If this is an apt metaphor, then it seems we are rapidly approaching a world in which all the houses are for rent and none of them can be bought. The power goes out of the hands of the consumers and into the hands of the companies.

I mean, it’s just good business.

Post tempestas

No entry this Monday. Latin Final will be Wednesday, so I’m working on that.

For now, a shameless plug.

Enjoy some bad writing. It’s a six-parter, so beware.

The Future of Gaming Technology

Just a quick update here to tide the blog over until after finals, at some point next week, after my Latin final has given its best shot at murdering me.

I was never one for ignoring the outside world in favor of sitting around inside all day, necessarily. From our youngest days my brother and our cousins always enjoyed packing sandwiches and heading off to adventuring in the great outdoors, and I can remember countless hours spent on local mountainsides, in  pursuit of the kind of care-free joy which the summer provided. I imagine it is because of this that video games have always been, for me, a device to simulate something which I could not actually do. And even with things that we couldn’t actually do, like command armies of alien races across strange battlefields, or adventure into the lairs of dragons, there were always tabletop games and role-playing games, though we did, and still do enjoy their digital equivalents. But again, these were things we couldn’t actually do. When it came to pursuing actual possibilities and getting some fresh air, we scrambled for the Croquet mallets or Badminton net with equal zeal, and took to such games with an attitude of boyish competitiveness indistinguishable from our time spent on the tabletop or in front of a screen. It seemed a simple formula: if you could do it, go do it (and believe me, we did). But if you couldn’t actually defy gravity while moving at incredible speeds or grab a rocket launcher to take out an enemy tank, then there were always video games. The line has always been pretty clear for us.

That’s why when the Wii debuted its motion sensor technology, we were probably the least impressed people in the existing fanbase, and tolerated the existence of what we affectionately called the “gimick-mote” as a necessary evil to achieve certain ends. Namely, in order to be able to select the game we wished to play. No more. But despite Nintendo’s obnoxious attempt to replace actual exericse, life went on.

That is, until Lionhead Studios decided to move things a step up with the introduction of Project Natal, the supposed next generation of motion-sensor technology.

You may view the video in question here.

I’ll admit I’m not exactly sure who this gentlemen is, but he seems to make certain questionably informed comments, such as when he states (twice, no less) that science-ficiton hasn’t even written about this sort of technology. Here is a man who’s never watched Star Trek, to say the very least. But aside from his personal ignorance, I’m not sure why everyone is so excited about technology which simulates a conversation I could have with my six year-old cousin. Lionhead’s spokesman seems to be pitching this new technology as some sort of glorious replacement for real life, real people, and real experience.

Curious that Lionhead chose to debut this technology with a cheap imitation (realistically, probably not that cheap) of things that we can already do, like interact with human beings. More curious still, this seems to validate the theory that video games are moving away from a means for group interaction and towards an increasingly solipsistic experience. For starters, the face-sensor technology doesn’t appear to encourage multi-player interaction, though I imagine it will, like X-box LIVE, boast that I can play with my friends across the net. Although, this really just means that I have to play with my friend who is now behind a mask, somewhere else than in my back room, where I can’t reach over and pat him on the back or punch him in the arm.

No, the soul of gaming always reveals itself to me at those times when there are six to eight people in our back room on their laptops playing team Starcraft over LAN and my brother is yelling at the top of his lungs about how over-powered something or other is and everyone is laughing, and I can see my friends smiling or whispering strategy across the tables to each other. Or else when we have three TVs set up with Halo or Smash Brothers of all kinds, playing furiously or else watching and commenting. No, gaming is something I do with people, for people. Because at the end of the day, the systems get turned off, but the people remain alive and real.

Viewpoints: College is a Scam

It was a quiet morning in the newsroom when I jokingly inquired if my next story could be called, “College is a scam.” My page editor and my editor-in-chief were in the room, and both, after a little prompting, actually agreed to the idea.

Shocked and amazed, I felt volumes of arguments and tens of thousands of words swell up inside of me, but alas, we only had room for just under a thousand.

Presented here is a very condensed version of my thoughts on the matter of the American school system, and even then, merely those on college.

No doubt there is enough criticism to go around for every level of our school system, but this will have to do for now.

Consider it a prelude.

(For the record, this is in part a reply to Ivy’s question from Question Month, and yes, I’m getting back to all of those; they will be answered!)

—–

College is a cultural scam, so says Zachary Porcu

If you’re a student going to college, it’s probably because your parents told you that in order to succeed in life, you needed an education.
Of course, it probably wasn’t just your parents; it was probably all of your teachers up through high school, too.

Further more, this message was probably communicated to you in a number of ways: through media, movies, television programs, and magazines.

The message that college will be enriching and beneficial to every young student is a belief foisted upon the unsuspecting youth from many directions.

Unfortunately, this belief is false. Contrary to this culturally ingrained idea, college is not for everyone, despite what the entirety of our culture tells us.

College is a business like any other, and a very lucrative one at that. But more diabolical still, it is a business that has, through culture and societal norms, become almost mandatory in regards to job security. And on top of this, it is a business that takes your money and most of the time gives you none of what it promised you in return.

First, however, let’s not dismiss the obvious. If one consults the National Center for Education Statistics, one will note that there is a significant financial advantage to possessing a bachelor’s degree.
Studies show that since 2000, the average median annual income for full-timers with a bachelor’s degree or higher was around $50,000 for men and $41,000 for women, compared to the $30,000 and $24,000, respectively, earned by those with only a high school diploma or GED.

This is well and good, but one has to remember that this category is applicable only to those who have actually earned their bachelor’s degrees, and college dropouts don’t fall into this category.
But who drops out of college, you may ask?

The Department of Education tells us that 30 percent of students drop out after the first year, and that a baffling 50 percent never graduate.

Gayla Martindale at State University writes, “It is estimated that 40 percent of college students will leave higher education without getting a degree, with 75 percent of these students leaving within their first two years of college.”

So yes, a graduate in possession of a bachelor’s degree will earn considerably more, but this will happen only to half of the population, at best.

The other half is pumping significant amounts of money into a business from which they will get nothing.
But wait a minute, why are we expecting everyone to go to college and get their bachelor’s degree? Why is our culture rewarding this kind of behavior?

What about the large portion of the population who is not academically-minded at all? What about the people who are good with their hands, who can solve problems quickly and intuitively, and have a talent for interacting with people, or who have a knack for a particular trade?

It turns out these people don’t necessarily need to be in college at all. But again, college is a business, and businesses want to make money.

While it is true that trade schools and vocational schools exist, much of the time there is still a tremendous push towards getting that “little piece of paper.”

The result of this is to pressure those who are not academically-minded into an academic setting instead of allowing them to hone their natural talents.

On the flip side, those who are in fact academically-minded and who actually do need to be in college can’t focus on what they need to be doing because they find themselves in a classroom full of people who don’t care, people who are there only because they are trying to ensure their job security.

And so we return to the wage difference. Why do graduates get paid more than others?

It turns out to be a matter of convention. Do they know how to do their job any better than another? Not necessarily.

It would be one thing if a bachelor’s-level degree actually constituted a set of knowledge or experience that one could utilize immediately.

True, students with a particular major know a little more about that subject, but only more than the layman. They don’t know as much as the experts and they certainly don’t know enough to make them competitive.

Indeed, for most academic or scholarly majors, a bachelor’s degree just won’t cut it.
No, college demands even more money in the post-graduate years before actual, useable knowledge is bestowed on the student or, at they very least, marketable knowledge.

But for the majority of students who do not acquire their post-graduate degrees, an undergraduate degree constitutes slip of paper. The joke is that most graduates end up in careers that have little to nothing to do with their major anyway.

This is because most businesses don’t require you to know what you’re doing, only that you wave your little piece of paper saying yes, college validated my parking stub, so now you can pay me.
What kind of culture is this? It is one that tells all students, regardless of their individual talents and

dispositions, to go to college and get degrees.

It is a system that rewards only the academic, but even then, it is merely a bland going-through-the-motions of academia, a sorry parody of actual learning

And so we come to a sad realization: You don’t have to walk out of college understanding anything. You don’t have to know how to do anything. You only have to possess that stamp of approval, a little stamp that costs thousands and thousands of dollars.

Viewpoints: The flip side of libel suits: a problem of definition

This was my opinions piece for the last issue of RCC’s Viewpoints.

In defense of the rather awkward way the two issues involved here overlap, I find myself blaming that convoluted dance I have come to know as “editing.” The original story was longer, and then it got cut down, and then I was told to fill it back up, except I used that space to take it in what I thought would be a more solid direction. From dancing around three to four different topics in a single story, I managed to get it down to only a two, and, unable to quite declare success, I deemed it “good enough” and went home to lose consciousness.

I think, however, I struck upon an important problem with the conclusion of the piece; yet another of the many internal problems with the much over-done “philosophy of tolerance.”

—–

The flip side of libel suits: a problem of definition

The fastest way to get sued by Tom Cruise is, apparently, to claim that he’s gay.

Recently, a porn star claimed he and Cruise had been lovers.

But when Cruise retaliated with a $10 million libel suit, more than a little controversy suddenly sprung up around the action.

Critics called into question whether it was politically correct to sue for libel when a claim of homosexuality is asserted.

And apparently this is not the sort of thing that happens just to high-profile celebrities like Cruise:

Last December Joseph Farah, editor-in-chief of the conservative Web site World Net Daily, sued Wikipedia for listing him as “an Evangelical Christian American journalist and noted homosexual.”

Regardless that the allegation was a practical joke, Wikipedia should not allow users to give out misinformation. That seems pretty clear.

But is $10 million necessary? Probably not. A public retraction should suffice. Newspapers do it, and so can anyone else who prints false information.

While the practical solution seems simple enough, the issue of political correctness remains.

To clarify, the idea is that if being accused of homosexuality can be considered “libel,” then the implication is that homosexuality is something slanderous, on the same level, presumably, as something like pedophilia.

With this chain of reasoning in mind, most critics seem to be taking lawsuits of this nature as another manifestation of so-called “homophobia.”

Gabriel Arana, on Slate.com, recently wrapped up an article on the subject with, “Gay rights groups should let the stars know that the real stain isn’t being labeled gay. It’s being called homophobic.”

Matthew Heller, from OnPointNews.com says, “Whatever the state of the law may be in New York, should courts still be accommodating anti-gay prejudice in defamation cases rather than rise above it?”

Now, these journalists and many others, seem to be implying that homosexuality is like any of society’s age-old prejudices, and that society needs to “grow” and accept it, like it has accepted racial equality and women’s rights.

However, these situations are by no means analogous, for at least one important reason: religion. The major monotheistic religions all definite homosexuality as a sin, and this will cause significant trouble for the issue at hand.

With Christianity at about two billion worldwide followers, and Islam coming in at a close second, we certainly aren’t dealing with a minority of the world’s population when it comes to a definition of homosexuality.

In fact, with a world population of about 6.75 billion, that makes more than half of all people either Christian or Muslim.

The relevant implications here are simple.

When you ask someone to accept a person of a certain race, you are asking him to go against irrational prejudice, a prejudice which is probably more arbitrary and meaningless than anything else.

But when you ask someone to accept homosexuality as valid, on the other hand, you are basically asking for that person to believe something contrary to his or her religion, and that is very different.

Regarding his Wikipedia fiasco, Joseph Farah wrote on World Net Daily,”It took hours of making corrections that were quickly replaced intentionally with the undocumented and undocumentable lies designed to hurt and humiliate.”

This is hardly a surprise, and this is the sort of reacion one would expect from people of the aforementioned religions.

Yes, people need to stop suing for outrageous sums. Yes, misinformation needs to be corrected. But no, the American people do not need to “mature” and accept homosexuality as a valid lifestyle, at least, not the ones who are religious. How can we ask them, in good conscience, to play pick-and-choose with their religion?

If we’re going to have a country that supports freedom of religion, then it looks like we’re going to have to accept the fact that some people (in all actuality, probably most people) will find accusations of homosexuality to be offensive, and, more than likely, view such claims as a defamation of character.

Should they sue for millions of dollars? I should hope not. But to tell half the world’s population that their religion is wrong is at least as big an error.

Viewpoints: The Last Full Measure of Devotion

My first opinions article for this year’s viewpoints.

——-

‘The last full measure of devotion’

The new administration changes the policy on media coverage of fallen soldiers

The United States is home to some 300 million or so citizens, and because of this, one can hardly expect all of them to be present in a meeting of Congress.

Fortunately, this is hardly an issue, thanks to the convenience of our representative democracy.

But, while some Americans may be perfectly happy allowing our elected officials to run everything with no questions asked, a majority of us prefer to keep in touch with what goes on.

This is why more than a few eyebrows were raised back in 1991 when President George H. W. Bush set a ban on the photography and filming of flag-draped caskets coming back from war zones.

One can almost sense the Orwellian-styled thought that went into such a decision.

Images coming back from the Vietnam War played a huge part in emotionalizing the war, and one can understand how a constant visual reminder of American casualties contributed to it’s unpopularity.

Little wonder, then, that such a tool would not be put in the hands of the media for future wars.

Of course, the photo ban hardly qualifies as a scandal, so the significance may easily be overlooked, but the purpose is served: it is far different to read off merely statistical casualties than it is to watch solemn faces transporting the caskets of fallen warriors.

Fortunately, Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently lifted the ban on such imagery in the spirit of “unprecedented transparency” which is supposed to pervade the Obama administration.

“After receiving input from a number of sources,” Gates said at the Pentagon news conference on February 26, “including all the military services, and organizations representing military families, I have decided that the decision regarding media coverage of the dignified transfer process at Dover should be made by those most directly affected: on an individual basis by the families of the fallen.”

But now the policy has taken an interesting twist, putting the power of the media in the hands of the families.

It would seem that the right thing is being done, only now it seems to be for all the wrong reasons. What was once an issue of information is now surprisingly one of “taste.”

“I have always believed that the decision as to how to honor our fallen heroes should be left up to the families,” Vice President Joe Biden said. “The past practice didn’t account for a family’s wishes, and I believed that was wrong.”

The vice president seems to be implying that the whole problem with the previous policy was its lack of attention on families, never mind any ulterior motives that might be at work by policymakers.

Are we going to ask the families of every officer about every decision we make regarding our troops?

John Ellsworth, president of Military Families United, clearly underlined what he felt was the central point, “It shouldn’t be up to the government to hide these images to the public,” he said. “But at the same time, I don’t know that we can allow the press to overstep the bounds of good taste in some of these instances.”

“Bounds of good taste?” One wonders if Ellsworth is merely grasping for filler words, but to use such a phrase in this regard seems degrading to the entire subject matter.

“Some people,” Ellsworth continued, “want to celebrate the lives of their fallen, and share their fallen hero with the American people, while others want to hold them a little closer to the vest and keep it private. We should respect that.”

Again, non-descript filler-phrases like “closer to the vest” and “keep it private.”

I’m sorry, but when did the American people lose their renowned boldness?

When did the issue of these brave young men take on vocabulary reminiscent of describing someone’s dubious personal life? When did a family gain the right to veto the honor of dying in battle?

Ralph Begleiter, a professor at the University of Delaware, in a January interview with Huffington post, argues that the fallen troops “died for all of us, they died for the nation, they died for the cause. It’s a right for all Americans to pay their respects for those who made the sacrifice. It is not a right held exclusively for the families themselves.”

Furthermore, Jon Soltz, a former captain and veteran of both the Kosovo campaign and the Iraq war, raises an important point: “Despite what other people in other groups like to say, when men and women raise their right hand for the armed forces of the United Statees, they don’t do it to a political party. And they don’t do it for a president. They do it for the Constitution.”

Such a point is well worth bearing in mind, considering that freedom of press is a constitutional right. And if the government itself cannot prohibit constitutional rights, why should families be able to?

This sort of emotional reaction on the part of the families starts to look even more absurd when one realizes that the “invasion of privacy” described is really nothing short of imagination.

Begleiter notes that “none of these caskets are identified in any way so there’s no invasion of privacy in the first place.”

Of course, that this issue is even being brought up in these terms remains a disturbing point.

There are certainly families out there who oppose the war, but there’s a huge difference between supporting a war and supporting the troops.

Waking up on the battlefield every day to the fact that you might not see tomorrow is nothing to scoff at, and the bravery required for such a duty certainly doesn’t need to be kept “closer to the vest.”

No one has the right to take away the recognition for such caliber of character.

And if a soldier pays the ultimate price for his country, should not that sacrifice, at the very least, be honored? Regardless of the war or the policy or the politicians, the soldier put his fellow countrymen above himself and is no longer with us because of it.

This, and not a hyper-sensitive photo policy, pays true honor to the families, not just of the fallen, but to every family in the country.

By all means let’s see them returning home, their caskets embraced by the flag as their memories are embraced by our hearts.