Don't Kiss in India... they might arrest you.

This is an old story but still worth commenting on. It is safe to say that Richard Gere will not be invited back to India anytime soon after he kissed actress Shilpa Shettyat an awards ceremony. It, of course, caused cries of outrage from many Indians because such public displays of affection are frowned upon. Gere has apologized for offending those who watched the awards ceremony. One Indian province actually issued an arrest warrant for both Gere and Shilpa! This incident makes India the laughing stock of the western world for sure since FOX broadcast two women kissing here in the states and no one got arrested. I take offense to this sort of behavior coming from a supposedly civilized democracy. It is ridiculous and to put it mildly, impolite to arrest guests of your country for making social gaffes. Gere, like most Americans, I’m sure had no clue about the no kissing in public taboo of India. On top of that he apologized, yet they went ahead and issued a warrant anyway, though a higher court canceled it later. Punishing someone from a foreign land who clearly is unaware of certain cultural niceties is horribly unfair. Heck, I think punishing someone who is unaware of a law in general should be unconstitutional. Such laws place the entire burden on the individual to know everything about the law, or in this case society, no mater how obscure or face punishment. Society has a duty to be understanding to the circumstances of the individual. We do not execute our mentally challenged individuals for murder in this country because they are unaware of the wrongness of their actions. I have problems with the court ruling that decided this since I feel the level of incapacity of the individual in that case wasn’t enough to justify commuting his sentence but I still feel the general principle of forgiving those who know no better holds true. The Indian courts and public have certainly been less than understanding to the circumstances of Ms. Shetty. While Mr. Gere has been somewhat forgiven, at least enough to not face further legal action, Ms. Shetty still has a court battle ahead of her. Amazingly, the geniuses behind issuing the arrest warrants think that just because she got kissed by Mr. Gere the offense to there overly sensitive sensibilities is her fault. I’ve seen the video footage, she was as surprised as everyone else. These officials should be ashamed of themselves blaming this on the poor woman when it was Richard Gere who did the grabbing and kissing. All I see from this fiasco are a bunch of vindictive and by American standards prudish individuals who are trying to punish whoever they can to save face because they can’t punish who they really want, Richard Gere. If anyone knows anything about the evolution of Indian culture I would sincerely like to know how kissing in public came to be considered public indecency. Please post up in comments if you have them.

The Student's Paradox

The Student’s Paradox

1. If you know a subject (S), then you waste your time going to a teacher of S in order to learn S from her. [p(remise)]
2. You shouldn't waste your time (i.e. do less valuable things when you could be doing more valuable things). [p]
3. Therefore, if you know S, you shouldn't go to a teacher of S. [1,2]
4. If you don't know S, then you take an unreasonable risk (of acquiring false beliefs) in going to a "teacher" of S in order to learn S from her. [p]
5. You shouldn't take unreasonable risks. [p]
6. Therefore, if you don't know S, you shouldn't go to a teacher of S.
7. But there are only two possibilities: you either know S or you don't know S. [p]
8. Therefore, either way, you should never go to a teacher of any subject. [3,6,7]

This paradox is an old favorite of mine since it proves why one should never attend class. It was part of the first lesson of my ancient philosophy course. Fortunately for my professor everyone still attended pretty regularly for the rest of the semester so he still gets paid. This paradox works well enough that my entire philosophy class failed to refute it and we moved on to other things later in the week. For my part, I haven’t really tried since I was amused the entire time watching my professor argue with his students about why they shouldn’t attend his class. So I think I’ll take up refuting this paradox now. 1, 2, and 3, are all fairly reasonable arguments since if you know something you’d be wasting your time going to a teacher to learn it. The key to the paradox is in part 4 where learning from a teacher is put forth as an unreasonable risk of being taught something which is false. If risking learning a false belief is unreasonable then the paradox is true. If the risk, however, is reasonable then it fails to be a paradox. The problem for the student is that in going to a teacher to learn a subject, he places himself at risk of learning false information. The student has no way of judging the validity of any information from the teacher because he has no prior reference from which to judge the truth of the information. It seems to me that in order to be taking an unreasonable risk the student would have to be learning from an individual who has shown no prior indications of trustworthiness, or worse, indications of being untrustworthy. The student could judge whether or not to believe what the teacher tells him based upon what the teacher tells him about what he already knows to be truth. A teacher who is in agreement with the student about what the student already knows to be truth is thereby trustworthy and learning from him/her is not an unreasonable risk. Another method might be to compare the instruction of several scholars who claim to know the truth. If they agree then they are either all right or all wrong but one has a 50/50 chance to learn true beliefs from them. This is better odds than visiting a casino (unless you are betting on black or red at the roulette table or card counting at Blackjack) so I wouldn’t consider it an unreasonable risk to learn something from a teacher when all teachers are in agreement. In the case where teachers do not agree on the truth then the safe bet is to bet against all of them that they are all wrong and to not learn from any of them. There can be only one truth but there may be many falsehoods. Out of 30 different answers from 30 different scholars only one may be right i.e. 1/30 chance of picking the right one to learn from. This leaves 29/30 false beliefs one could acquire. Trying to find the one true belief out of 30 scholars is an impossibility with no prior knowledge of the subject. This leaves us with what we do know for certain and that is 29/30 have to be wrong. Also, it is a possibility that even 30/30 could be wrong since we have no way to judge the validity of the 30 different truths. I think this satisfactorily demonstrates the difference between unreasonable risk and reasonable risk. While writing this I’ve thought about its application to religion. It could be said that it is entirely unreasonable to believe in any religion because there are many, many different religions each with its own truth. The person trying to decide which religion to believe in has no prior knowledge of the truth of any of them. This is why in order to believe in a religion one is said to have faith. To a mathematician this mean, you are taking your chances. By my calculations those are probably something like 1?/2600 the question mark meaning that with no prior knowledge to judge even the one religion that is supposedly right could really be wrong. So lets make it something like 0/2601. That is as good as saying the truth, if such a thing even exists, hasn’t been found yet. Which makes the agnostics right, so far. Good luck, in your own searches for truth. Until next post, keep thinking on this.

The Songbird

Like a songbird he lies
In his nest, in his cage
Protected from the world outside
From anger, hatred, and covetous crimes.

Does anyone hear the songbird cry?
The despair and anguish floating from his cage
Through the woven wicker bars he cries
As the seasons slowly change.

Finally, the songbird rests
Trapped behind thorny vines
Waiting for the light of day
As darkness smothers his heartfelt cries
Enfolding his song until it dies.

No one listened from outside.

The Art of Violence and Justice

The key question to any philosophy of morality is "When, if at all, is it permissible to do violence to others?"

In one of my earlier posts I discussed the idea of self-defense as being a reasonable instance in which one can morally do others harm. When one attacks another physically one is breaking the compact of "do no harm to others" and therefore leaves the protection granted by that moral clause and can be harmed in turn.

What I failed to discuss in that writing was any sort of case where an individual is harmed not by physical means but by social, economic, or bureaucratic means. In such a case would it be permissible to resort to physical violence? Most people would probably answer no, but then no one would think that it would be impossible to solve such problems by non-violent means.

However, let us make an example of such a case where communication and bargaining will not work. Let us say that there is an individual who's boss hates him. This could be for a variety of reasons, perhaps he is of a different race, perhaps he is gay, or perhaps he simply refuses to cover up a mismanagement of funds by the department(not embezzlement just poorly managed). Suffice it to say that the man is hated by his manager to the extent that manager makes his work a living hell and will eventually fire him if he can't force him to resign. The man has clearly done nothing wrong to the company but he is none-the-less at the mercy of his manager. Because he is such a hard working individual he will put up with all the indecencies of being moved to the office by the toilets and getting stapler stolen. In the end he is fired. The higher ups he appealed to were all friends of the manager and ignored his please that he had done nothing wrong. They had trumped up charges of insubordination and lack of positive work ethic to fire him on. The next day he sets out to find a new job and in the coming weeks realizes that his previous employer has spread his name around town as someone who is not to be hired. He can't find a job and in the meantime the rent is coming due. He has no money left with which to hire a lawyer to fight his employer in court over his unfair firing. He is up a creak and will have to move elsewhere to find a job probably in a city several states over and he will have to sleep in his car until he can afford to pay rent again. Those who did him wrong get off without so much as a filed lawsuit.

So there is our conundrum, what is our individual to do? Should he go do some massive property damage to their vehicles? Or maybe rough one up in an alley some night for payback? Perhaps he should stick to non-violent means and spread vicious rumors about his employer to get him fired? But what about the lawsuit that is sure to follow since he has no proof that his employer did anything wrong... they'd end up taking his car and the shirt on his back too. Our options seem to come down to some sort of vengeance.

Most people would likely say that vengeance is wrong, an eye for an eye leaves all men blind etc. etc. But in the end there is no justice left for our poor evicted employee. Sure some might say that there will come a final justice after death but I'm not one for counting on that. After all we didn't wait for Hitler to die to try to make him pay for his crimes why should we wait for someone much easier to punish? Just a few slices of some tires or maybe a baseball bat and our dear friend will have taken back his loses or well... at least inflicted them equally upon those who have done him harm. This seems to be the key difference between vengeance and justice. Vengeance inflicts similar harm upon others while justice lends itself to retaking that which has been taken. So for our dear individual in order to engage in justice would need to do something other than bash in a few windshields.

While vengeance can be somewhat cathartic what seems to make it immoral is that one is not trying to achieve equity but instead inflict the same inequity upon others. This can be a difficult distinction for one to make especially in moments of injustice being inflicted upon oneself. One's anger can often get the better of one. This brings us back to figuring out what options our homeless individual is left with that do not lead him down the immoral path.

The answer I have come up with is quite simple but may be difficult in execution none-the-less if one wants justice sometimes one cannot follow the letter of the law. The law and justice do not always coincide as many unfair convictions of people who were thought to be rapists attest to(Thank you DNA testing). Essentially, our man would have to commit grand theft auto and take his employer's vehicle to the local chop shop. Upon his arrival he will be paid a sufficient enough sum to move to another town pay for an apartment with his restitution money and find a new job. Hopefully, it will be one with a kind individual as a boss. This is justice and not vengeance for the pure reason that our man takes no violent action against his employers or their property. In stealing his boss's car he gets restitution for the harm that has been done him not some cheap thrill of merely bashing a few windshields. All in all, it is the round about way of getting what would have come to him if he would have had a lawyer to fight his employers in court and a fair trial which would have seen through his boss's underhanded dealings.

So my answer is that there seems to be ways out of impossible situations of injustice without resorting to violence. Such situations may only be solved by violating the law but are none-the-less just in their outcomes. Perhaps, there is some impossible situation I haven't thought of where there is no way out but vengeance yet I do not think that is the case. One just has to think outside the box and outside the rules sometimes.

Another case which comes to mind is that of our forefathers. When Britain began overtaxing Americans and violating the property of the colonists they felt it necessary to break away from the mother country and say no. One might think that they could have waged a war of civil disobedience instead of one of guns but the British weren't adverse to making examples of those who disobeyed them. This being the case I have to conclude that outright war was inevitable since defending oneself while being disobedient might have required offing a few redcoats in self-defense. This would have lead to outright war or cowering colonists taking the abuse they were given and probably eventually giving in. It seems to me that civil disobedience while proven relatively effective in the past when demonstrated on a united front has lead to many individuals being sacrificed as examples. This is why I'm not a pacifist. If someone is beating you then you should beat them back. Turning the other cheek while still resisting peacefully only gets you hit again, probably harder, and most likely until your skull fractures and you die. My point, I guess, is that when violence is finally used by one party then the time for peaceful resolution is over.

Thank you for reading. I'd love to hear any impossible philosophical problems you guys can come up with where pure vengeance is the only option left. Good night.

MySpace Police

For some reason I have a difficult time coming up with titles for my articles on the stupidity and deplorable behavior of others. Every time I try to write a good one I end up thinking of titles involving what I would like to do to the ignorant jerks. Usually, these involve various forms of telling them to do anatomically impossible things combined with veiled threats that they should suffer physical or mental harm. I have another article to write on that later but suffice it to say I'm going to keep my titles rather bland so as not to risk disturbing people at first. Hopefully, they might care to read further and discover why I would want to write such titles. If so maybe they'll be convinced my feelings would make better titles than what I'm using.

Stacy Snyder a 25 year old woman who attended Millersville University was allegedly refused her bachelor of science in education degree and a teaching certificate after the University administration found a picture called "Druken Pirate" on her MySpace. She has filed suit in federal court.

You will notice the picture below:



She was apparently accused by the University of promoting underage drinking. In my opinion, the University's actions against Ms. Snyder are ridiculous. Not only is she of legal drinking age(25) but they can't even prove there was an alcoholic beverage in the cup! I'd really like to know how these bloody Nazis of University officials can get off saying someone is promoting underage drinking by wearing a party hat!

To the best of my knowledge the majority of individuals on my freshmen hall drank underage at least once. With the exception of myself and a couple other nerds I'd say around 90% had done so at least once and 50% had done so multiple times. Guess what folks? People drink. Its bound to happen at any University because access to alcohol at Universities is open door.

Millersville should be happy she was well over the legal drinking age and stayed the hell out of her private life. I'd bet half those jerks that denied her her degree drank underage at least once. From all indications Ms. Snyder had completed all her coursework with a good GPA. If drinking legally is encouraging underage drinking then we should probably fire most University professors staff and elementary through high school teachers. I know dang well most of them have consumed alcohol at least once and I'm sure there are more than a few of them who have been in a picture while their blood alcohol content was higher than normal. Eggnog at Christmas anyone?

Getting a degree is about grades not one's personal life. The fact these people make it about that is disgusting. I've seen far too many of these social police actions by employers and schools in the news not to be angered by the pettiness of people in power. So I hope you'll forgive me for suggesting the anatomically impossible in this case.

Source 1
Source 2
Source 2 continued

Personal Account: The Virginia Tech Rampage

I'm sure everyone has already seen the news coverage of what the major channels are calling "the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history". It's a tragedy that will likely stay with people here for a long time to come. Its one of those events like 9/11 which demarcates the before and the after in people's lives. In this case it is the before and after for people here at Virginia Tech and their families not the before and after for the United States. That makes it no less significant for the people here.

My own story of this day begins at 9:00AM. I got up and began to prepare for class. I had a quiz this day. Sometime between 9:15-9:20AM I check my e-mail. I continue with my morning routine and leave for class around 11:50-11:55AM, it is in a building behind Buruss Hall. As I reach the drill field via a route beside Slusher Hall I notice a line of cars blocked by police further up. I assume like many that the police are responding to another bomb threat since we've had a couple the last few days. I proceed to cross a fourth of the drill field and I am yelled at by the police and told to turn back. I do so just to appease them but I don't feel alarmed(considered it just another fake bomb threat) and kind of wonder why if I can't cross the drillfield on that side if they haven't bothered to block it off. I overhear a couple of guys talking, as I get back to the sidewalk, about someone being shot in Ambler-Johnston and that classes are canceled. Seeing that there is no point in continuing to class I return to my dorm. From there I learn that there is a mass shooting in Norris/Holden Hall. Before this I was operating under the impression the situation was similar to the escaped killer William Morva we experienced here last semester. It turned out to be much, much bloodier.

Well, as you can see I missed all the relevant e-mails due to my routine and nearly ended up walking across the drill field because it wasn't blocked off fast enough, or at least not at the end I was crossing. I've found out I'm not the only one who missed these e-mails so I don't consider myself particularly unlucky. I mentioned before the bomb threats from the previous week. Below is the e-mail I received the day before pertaining to those events:

Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 16:01:48 -0400
From:
To:
Subject: Engineering Buildings to Reopen Monday

To The University Community

Three university buildings, Torgersen, Durham, and Whittemore Halls, have been closed since Friday because of a bomb threat. Police have swept the buildings with search teams and deemed the buildings suitable for use beginning 7 a.m. Monday, 16 April.

The university has posted a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons involved in either bomb threat incidents occurring April 2 or April 13. The university encourages anyone with relevant information to contact the Virginia Tech Police Department at 232-TIPS (8477) or 231-6411.

Virginia Tech Police, in collaboration with other law enforcement agencies, continue to investigate both incidents.

What I do know of events so far is at around 7:15AM the shooter killed both a girl and an Resident Adviser who supposedly showed up to break up/mediate an argument they were having. The building was swarmed and sealed off by police who conducted searches for the suspect and secured testimony from witnesses. The did not find the shooter. The search for the shooter proceeded and no e-mail notifying students was sent out until around 9:25AM. I do not know when the campus authorities responsible for sending such e-mails were initially informed of the incident. The first e-mail I received is as follows below:

Date:	Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:26:24 -0400
From:
To:
Subject:	Shooting on campus.

A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating.

The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case. Contact Virginia Tech Police at 231-6411

Stay attuned to the www.vt.edu. We will post as soon as we have more information.

There was no indication from this e-mail that anyone should stay indoors or that the shooting was lethal. It does not specify that there were multiple victims. It was released roughly two hours after the first shootings took place.

After returning to my dorm I checked my e-mail and in addition to the first e-mail I found the following e-mails. This is the second:

Date:	Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:50:07 -0400
From:
To:
Subject:	PLease stay put

A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows

Nearly two and a half hours after the first incident it is decided to have the students stay inside their buildings. This e-mail appears hastily typed and the final period after "windows" was left off originally.

The third e-mail:

Date:	Mon, 16 Apr 2007 10:16:40 -0400
From:
To:
Subject:	All Classes Canceled; Stay where you are

Virginia Tech has canceled all classes. Those on campus are asked to remain where there are, lock their doors and stay away from windows. Persons off campus are asked not to come to campus.

This message was received 25 minutes after the second e-mail. It reaffirms the directive to stay inside and appears more calm and collected.

The fourth e-mail:

Date:	Mon, 16 Apr 2007 10:52:45 -0400
From:
To:
Subject:	Second Shooting Reported; Police have one gunman in custody

In addition to an earlier shooting today in West Ambler Johnston, there has been a multiple shooting with multiple victims in Norris Hall.

Police and EMS are on the scene.

Police have one shooter in custody and as part of routine police procedure, they continue to search for a second shooter.

All people in university buildings are required to stay inside until further notice.

All entrances to campus are closed.

Nearly 45 minutes later this e-mail confirms a second shooting and incorrectly reports that the police have a shooter in custody. I had already been informed by watching the local news reports that a second shooting had occurred.

The following is a fifth e-mail I received from housing and dinning services of Virginia Tech. At this point I was kind of wondering what I would be doing for food since I'd run out of snacks in my room the other day.

Date:	Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:33:09 -0400
From:
To:
Reply To:
Subject:	Housing Notice: Dining Operations

Residents:

First and foremost, stay indoors and away from windows and doorways
until you receive the all clear from the university.

D2 will remain open this afternoon once the all clear has been announced
through dinner time for students to get a meal.


Kenneth E. Belcher
Associate Director for Occupancy Management

I have edited out the lower part of this fifth e-mail so as to protect Mr. Belcher's contact information. The main bodies of all the previous e-mails are intact and I only edited the TO: and FROM: headers to protect the listservs.

The following is the sixth e-mail, this one from our university president:

Date:	Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:41:44 -0400
From:
To:
Subject:	Statement by President Charles W. Steger

Shooting at Virginia Tech / Statement by President Charles W. Steger

The university was struck today with a tragedy of monumental proportions. There were two shootings on campus. In each case, there were fatalities. The university is shocked and horrified that this would befall our campus. I want to extend my deepest, sincerest and most profound sympathies to the families of these victims which include students There are 22 confirmed deaths.

We currently are in the process of notifying families of victims. The Virginia Tech Police are being assisted by numerous other jurisdictions. Crime scenes are being investigated by the FBI, University Police, and State Police. We continue to work to identify the victims impacted by this tragedy. I cannot begin to covey my own personal sense of loss over this senselessness of such an incomprehensible and heinous act The university will immediately set up counseling centers. So far centers have been identified in Ambler Johnson and the Cook Counseling Center to work with our campus community and families.

Here are some of the facts we know:

At about 7:15 a.m. this morning a 911 call came to the University Police Department concerning an event in West Amber Johnston Hall. There were multiple shooting victims. While in the process of investigating, about two hours later the university received reports of a shooting in Norris Hall. The police immediately responded. Victims have been transported to various hospitals in the immediate area in the region to receive emergency treatment.

We will proceed to contact the families of victims as identities are available.

All classes are cancelled and the university is closed for the remainder for the today. The university will open tomorrow at 8 a.m. but classes will be cancelled on Tuesday. The police are currently staging the release of people from campus buildings.

Families wishing to reunite with the students are suggested to meet at the Inn at Virginia Tech. We are making plans for a convocation tomorrow (Tuesday) at noon at Cassell Coliseum for the university community to come together to begin to deal with the tragedy.

The final e-mail after the shooter was confirmed dead is as follows:

Date:	Mon, 16 Apr 2007 16:31:29 -0400
From:
To:
Subject:	Campus Update on VT Shootings

Virginia Tech remains closed on Monday, April 16, 2007. Vehicular entrances to campus are severely restricted to essential personnel only. Additional security remains on campus as the investigation continues.

Counseling assistance for students in available at West Ambler Johnston and McComas Hall until 9 p.m. tonight. Students are encouraged to utilize these services. Counseling for faculty and staff is available at the Bowman Room in the Merriman Center (athletic complex). Student may also be together at the Old Dominion Ballroom at Squires Student Center.

The university will also close on Tuesday, April 17. Essential personal are to report for work. Classes will be canceled.

A public gathering will be held Tuesday, April 17 at Cassell Coliseum at 2 p.m. (a time change from the originally scheduled 10 a.m. gathering).

All students are urged to contact their parents as soon as possible to let them know individuals are safe.

Students, faculty, and staff who may have any information related to the incident at West Amber Johnston Hall and Norris Hall are encouraged to go to the Blacksburg Police Department to make statements, or call 540-231-TIPP (8477), or 231-6411

Parents with concerns are asked to call the Dean of Students Office at 540-231-3787.

Individuals injured in the two shootings have been taken to area hospitals.

The restrictions on traffic allowed into campus prevented anyone from ordering out for food. That was annoying tonight but the on campus food services staff were brave enough to stick around for us. More than just D2 opened up again after the all clear was signaled. What I know at the moment is 33 people including the shooter are dead and 15 more injured. He used two 9mm handguns and committed suicide. The identities of the shooter and the most of the victims have not yet been released.

I would like to thank our medical professionals at the regional hospitals for doing there best to help during this crisis. It couldn't have been easy to deal with the flood of casualties especially when the high winds prevented more critically injured patients from being airlifted elsewhere. Our local law enforcement officials also did what they could to stop this tragedy and I thank them also. Good night folks. I'll update this when I can.

Update: Well the shooter is Cho Seung-Hui. Also, as a correction he used a 9mm and a .22 not two 9mms as previously stated. As it happens he also lived in my dorm, Harper Hall. I'm fairly certain he lived on one of the upper floors but I don't have any information yet as to what room or who his roommate was. Odds are I could have passed him the hallway sometime event though he was probably on the other side of the building. Damn, that is kind of disturbing. Also, I'm fairly certain Virginia Tech removed his name and room number from their online person search to make it difficult to learn anything. So I guess I'll just have to talk with people.

Bush Supports Gay Rights... sort of

As much as I've criticized the conservative anti-homosexual groups in some of my other writings I have to give credit to President Bush in appointing General Peter Pace. If anyone is sure to work hard at keeping homosexuals out of the military its him. I have to applaud our country's efforts since 1994 to throw out close to 10,000 able bodied soldiers for their sexual orientation. Just think that by continuing this policy President Bush not only sacrifices more upstanding, moral, straight soldiers in the Iraq war but is willing to bite the bullet and accept lower numbers of troops than necessary to complete our mission there. He could easily have used thousands more to get the job done. By continuing this policy President Bush is doing an excellent job to support gay rights by saving hundreds of homosexuals who may have died had they actually been sent to fight for this country in Iraq. Its wonderful to know that even in these times conservatives do their best to save the lives of citizens in America's minority groups.

If the above paragraph doesn't sound ridiculous to you for a variety of reasons then there is something seriously wrong with you. If you are a conservative who hates gays then logically you should support them serving in the military on the front lines. Not only would their deaths help save the moral straight soldiers in Iraq but would help to keep control of a worsening situation in that destabilized country.

On the other hand if you support the rights of homosexuals to not be penalized for their orientation then you should support their sacrifice for the benefit of this country that allows them such freedom of choice.

Really, its absurd that during wartime our country does not use every able bodied soldier who has volunteered to server his or her country. Removing soldiers from the ranks for things that don't conflict with their ability to fight is retarded. Sun Tzu would be rolling in his grave at the idiocy of it. As for my personal opinion I don't think giving homosexuals a disproportionate number of dangerous assignments so they die in combat is fair either but thats just another problem to overcome in gaining some much deserved acceptance and respect for homosexuals. Seriously, as long as the guy or gal isn't grabbing you constantly you shouldn't give a crap if you have to bunk with them.

No longer having 10,000 more soldiers that you could have used is just another thing that adds up to how to lose a war. Maybe President Bush will think about it when chaos breaks out in the green zone sometime.

Source

Texas Against Public Health

Isn't it wonderful that this day in age the government won't even look out for the welfare of its own people by helping everyone get vaccinations? Or are they planning further ahead and hope that a bunch of women dropping dead of an entirely preventable cancer will reduce our ever growing population and stave off overcrowding and mass starvation?

Forgive me for being so blunt, but it seems like the Texas House of Representatives are a bunch of morons. They stop mandatory vaccinations which would save thousands of lives and the only excuse they make is that they think the governor has a vested interest in requiring it because he has ties to drug companies. Well yes, the drug companies are going to make money off of it but thats what they do and it still benefits the public not to die of cancer. Basically, all they are doing by blocking vaccinations is being jerks for their own political reasons.

My parting advice to Texas is, get rid of the jerks next election. Maybe then people won't have to die of cancer.

Source

A Comedy of Errors

Some of you may be familiar with this story but for those of you who are not, a substitute school teacher is facing a considerable amount of prison time because she is clueless about technology.

It is incredibly stupid that prosecutors charged Julie Amero with anything. The investigators failed to check the computer for spyware and malware which could have directed it to porn sites creating the prior search history she was convicted on. The poor woman has been criticized for failing to protect the children from seeing the pornography on the computer even though witnesses have testified that she not only pushed them away and tried to block the screen from their view but ran to get help to remove the pop-ups because she didn't know how. Considering her lack of knowledge she did everything right that she could do except lock the door when she left to get help to keep kids from wandering in.

I don't know about everyone else but I can forgive her for that one mistake when she is obviously so frantic to get rid of the pop-ups and concerned for the wellbeing of children that it slipped her mind.

If she is at fault then the school system must be doubly so because due to not keeping their security updated the pop-ups were allowed through their filter. The point is this sort of thing can happen because there are dirty people out there who make these kinds of spyware and malware programs. The prosecutors should spend their time charging them instead of a clueless substitute teacher.

I have had a similar experience with pop-ups on my home computer years ago. I was visiting a site totally unrelated to pornography and a pop-up came showing porn. When I hastily clicked the X to remove it about a hundred other pornographic pop-ups began flooding my computer screen. I ended up having to unplug the computer because its was locking it up.

My father has also had a similar experience at our public library when someone who had previously been using the computer left pornographic pop-ups on the screen. He tried clicking X and more pop-ups flooded the screen. He ended up going to find one of the librarians who took care of turning off and restarting the machine. He may not have been as clueless as Mrs. Amero but he certainly didn't want to damage or violate library policy by turning off the library's computer himself.

Julie Amero obviously felt the same way about respecting other people's property so instead of unplugging it and chancing that she would damage it by doing so she got someone who would be qualified to make such a decision. She clearly didn't know if it would hurt the computer or not to turn it off and did the only thing she could reasonably do, get help.

Yet these idiotic people want to punish her for it.

Source

The Third Question Answered

In an earlier post I discussed the nature of God. There were three main questions/objections posed to his existence. I answered the first two then but left third for a later time. The problem of evil is what I will discuss here in this post.

How can God allow evil to exist and even be responsible for its creation if He is an omni-benevolent God?

A common response to this question is that God did not create evil but Satan did. The classic comeback to that statement is God is omniscient and would have known that Satan would create evil and, therefor, by proxy be party to its creation.

This thinking that God could do something evil is wrong headed. I originally thought this problem would be much more complicated but it is not. God could not have committed an evil act when creating evil because it doesn't follow logically. If God created evil then the act of doing so would predate evil's existence and therefore not be subject to being considered an evil act.

That solves the part of the question involving the creation of evil but now we are left with, "Why would God allow evil to continue to exist?"

The answer to this seems a little more complicated. The simplest explanation would be that it is required for evil to exist in order for there to be such a thing as good. Without evil humanity could not recognize the good. This is slightly problematic thought since now that evil exists the question becomes "But isn't God committing an evil act by allowing evil to exist?"

The answer to that is much more difficult. I would think that the answer is no. Otherwise we are all committing an unbelievable number of evil acts by not helping others simply because we have the ability to. The U.S. has the amount of wealth necessary to end starvation and cure disease in Africa but in order to do so we would have to give most of it up. The average American is not willing to do this. U.S. citizens are, for the most part, not responsible for all the evil things happening to others around the world but we refrain from interfering to stop them from occurring. This is in the same vain as God not interfering to end all evil even though he has the ability to. There seems to me to be more to the world than just good and evil or there are maybe more types of good and evil. Not causing evil could be said to be good but interfering to stop evil can also be said to be good. The question here is "Is putting an end to evil a greater act of good than simply refraining from committing evil acts?"

If the answer is yes then while God is good allowing evil to continue to exist is not the greatest possible good act available to Him. However, it is not evil so He can still be considered to be omni-benevolent. One would like to think that God exemplifies the highest possible good and allowing evil to exist when there is a greater possible good in eliminating it makes Him seem less great. However, evil is necessary for good so it may be that He is justified in not eliminating it and is thereby engaging in the greatest possible good by allowing it to continue to exist. Humanity on the other hand has no possible objection on the grounds of necessity to not choose the greater of the two goods and help others as much as they possibly can. The only answer to humanity's faults is that we are human and not angels or God. There is a good argument here that we should try to be though. There does not seem to be a straight answer to why God or humanity should not do the greatest good possible. It is also conceivable that there is nothing in this universe but good and evil and I am wrong in assuming that there is something other or more than one type of good. If this is the case, then I see no way to say that God is omni-benevolent since allowing evil to exist does not seem to be an act of great goodness and more closely resembles evil if there is no neutrality.

What can you expect from people who threw perfectly good tea overboard?

Its amazing to me just how stupid people can be when they are fed propaganda day and night instilling an unreasonable fear of terrorism. Take a look at the things that caused all the problems in Boston this week. Link

It doesn't look like a bomb to me. Besides, what terrorist is stupid enough to put flashing lights on his IED (Improvised Explosive Device) to attract attention to it? Surely, any good terrorist wouldn't want people to notice that he's placed a bomb so that no one tries to escape it. On a more interesting not the media is editing the image of the cartoon in the pictures so as to make it more presentable to the public. I find this highly unethical. If you show an image it should be as it originally was or you are distorting how the public sees reality. Its just wrong to do that. If you'd prefer not to show it period thats fine but if you show it it better be unchanged.

The supposed "bombs" were placed two to three weeks ago in ten cities including Boston and only just late this week got noticed as suspicious. Obviously, no one thought they were a problem for a few weeks and the other cities didn't consider them a threat at all. This whole mess is a result of overactive imaginations on the part of Boston officials. They should just admit they made a bad judgment call and leave the poor guys who set up the cartoon billboards alone. Its really nice that Turner Broadcasting offered to pay for the city's expenses since I don't think they are liable for a public official's stupidity.

The lesson to take out of this is cartoons do not equal bombs. Stop being paranoid, accept your mistakes, and move on. Good Luck to Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, in getting the charges dropped. This whole thing is ridiculous.

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