Outside The Asylum

Why Jesus was born in December

No, not the movie. The 1960s TV show: THIS is marriage. Real marriage. Not that cheap American version, destroyed by divorce, damaged by psychiatrists, ruined by imaginary individualism. No, Gomez and Morticia really have a love that is to be defended, against the world, against all who would attack it. THAT is what we lost due to the sexual revolution. We lost marriage.

But if you find Evangelii Gaudium challenging, perhaps you need to hear from St. John Paul The Great, autotuned:

Kevin O'Brien explains the odd choice of emphasizing homosexuality over adultery, theft, and fornication when considering 1 Corinthians 6:9-20 . Adultery Pride Day, anybody?

Christopher's Doctor Who Lego Fanfic: Not the best photography- nor the best stop gap as the frame rate is one every four seconds- but be kind, he is special needs. At the very least, at over five minutes, it's the longest story line he's come up with yet.

I loved this song growing up- it spoke to my undiagnosed (at the time) Asperger's: But today, it has inspired a mortal sin in me, that I also see in the neurodiversity and LGBT movements in the United States- Pride. Readers of this blog are well familiar with my complaints about the LGBT movement. And yes, this post was inspired by yet another Crisis article on the topic. But, I do not believe the sin of the New Homophiles is homosexuality (in fact, by their voluntarily celibacy, it significantly is NOT!). Instead, I'd like to talk to you about a subset of the neurodiversity movement- the evolutionary autistics. Evolutionary autistics see the gifts of autism- affinity for complex systems, ability to work on a computer without talking to another human being for hours on end, brilliant technical and philosophical insights- as "the next stage in human evolution". A good example is the fictional character of Dr. Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory: I submit that like...

I've long said that the only real difference between a libertarian and a crony capitalist is a bank account large enough to buy politicians. With the combination of Staffergate and Pope Francis's Apostolic Exhortation , I'm beginning to think that we live under rule of corruption, not rule of law. It's hard to tell the difference between the two- since the very people writing the law are the ones taking the bribes. This is why the magical overflowing glass of Argentinian's version of the trickle down theory never overflowed and kept growing larger. This is why a rising tide floats some boats and sinks others. This is what is wrong with von Mises' theories about government in general- a free market means that government is for sale to the highest bidder. This is also why Bill Diss' math classroom was invaded by Planned Parenthood, he was harrassed, and finally last night, was fired . Money wins again- how can a public school math teacher compete with the ...

An interesting article at The Catholic Thing on the ordinary charity of those too poor for monetary gifts suggests perhaps that Pope Francis is neither capitalist nor Marxist- as a good Catholic should be neither- but is instead talking about physical on the ground reality of economics, rather than lofty theories (well, aside from the theory of Trickle Down, which as anybody knows who actually works with people who don't own medium to large businesses, doesn't work). Presence, is what the poor require, not presents. I must admit that I myself have fallen into this trap this Christmas season- but all the presents have been purchased, I'm on a train that can't be stopped. Still, three out of the thirty or so presents I have purchased *are* presence- events that we will get to enjoy with family and friends during the 12 days of Christmas, as opposed to physical items. However, as I work 50 hour weeks to pay for all of this (well, not just pay for it all, but also becau...

The first court case of February-December Romance results in Italy reducing the age of consent to 11.

Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium paragraphs 50-109 has much to say on the dangers of capitalism. Libertarians in the Church have fired back, claiming that there are no markets that are not regulated, at least in the first world. A few admit to the idea that due to corruption, unfettered de facto markets do exist in the third world- especially hell holes like Argentina, where the Pope is from and where the economy collapsed under the weight of predatory capitalism in 2001. But is corruption limited to the third world? One state in our union has more than 50% of its income derived from predatory capitalism directly- derived from controlling investments in companies that exploit markets all over the world. And so for your consideration, may I present unfettered capitalism, New York Style where the government is most assuredly for sale to the highest bidder. Is it any wonder that this is also a culture of waste, where gay marriage, prostitution, pornography, and abortion are widel...

Reading Pope Benedict's reply to an atheist, combined with a new theory about the Holographic Universe being misreported in the press caused this comment on slashdot- which turned into a major discussion on the reality of mathematics as applied to science.

Maybe it was Pope Francis's recent apostolic exhortation. Maybe he's just tired of fighting. But Paul Ryan's new budget solves the sequester standoff without cutting programs for the poor (except people in jail collecting unemployment checks) and without new taxes.

It costs a lot of money to be poor in America today . It's incredibly easy for rich east coasters to claim poverty doesn't exist- or worse yet, that the only thing we need to do is tolerate the bad habits of the poor like divorces and homosexuality- without recognizing that the main reason people ARE poor in America is because the free market is full of fraudulent activity designed specifically to take advantage of the poor.

You can bet that if Hunter had been kissing boys that wouldn't be considered sexual harassment- but because he and his girlfriend are six years old and we can't possibly let heterosexuality begin, Hunter is being persecuted for opposite sex attraction.

Careful when you poke a sleeping Pope Emeritus- the German university professor will attack. But here's a curious thought embedded halfaway down in this letter- are many of our scientific breakthroughs merely science fiction and not science fact? Richard Dawkins' _The Selfish Gene_ is considered science fiction by the Pope, and certainly the entire field of quantum mechanics is currently more science fiction than science fact, based as it is on only secondary evidence about particles too small to be scanned by any instrument we have. And yet, many of these guesses seem right- until, of course, they are proven wrong, as they often are.

And no, it isn't just the latest state scapegoat, Oracle. I don't know about Obamacare in the rest of the nation, but the poor here in Oregon work 50-80 hour workweeks just to keep fed, sheltered, and clothed. They don't have hours and hours to waste online with a half-assed website that in the end, lets you download a 19 page PDF to print out, fill out, send in, get the wrong one back, get their identity stolen by the prison inmate doing data entry, get the right one back, pick a plan, get told it's the wrong plan, get a guess on what my subsidy will be, pay the wrong amount, have to write 6 checks to pay the right amount, only to get fined in the end because they lost the paperwork. Hint to socialists out there- the way to bring the communist revolution to America is make it convenient . Otherwise, nobody's going to have the time to bother.

I used to say that everything worthwhile in the civilization of mankind, came from Catholicism- and I blamed other cultures for plagiarizing good. Until I watched this:

The lengths some people go to in fear of the living wage

or, as this one puts it, going down the ladder of depravity , by which figures of speech are used to destroy sin and call evil good. A great example is this little rant of depravity which chows the misogyny inherant in the pro-choice movement.

Does religion cause war? We've heard this charge from the atheists so many times, it's become a lie wanting to be true. But a massive study on the art of war from 2004 reveals that out of 1,763 wars, only 123 were caused by religion. Take Islam out of the picture, removing Jihad, and you're down to 57 wars (including the Crusades, the 30 years war, and all the wars of the reformation) caused by non-Islamic religion. In other words, like so much else- Atheism is objectively false.

Evangelii Gaudium has been released Well, this should cause all who put money and material wealth ahead of people to explode regardless of the side of the political spectrum they are on. But those aren't the only people who are attacked by this, the first publication of Pope Francis.  Equally attacked are moral relativists, who take advantage of the specific problems of poverty to lead people away from the truth, while reducing the faith to the private and personal. The United States isn't even mentioned in the first 63 sections, a real blow to those who seem to thing the United States is the center of the universe. The unborn aren't mentioned until section 213! And that's just my first read through.  I'm going to download this PDF to my phone.

Pope Francis has been a hard man to pin down theologically; his tendency to speak in less-than-concrete pastoral terms, combined with a willingness to admit to his own mistakes and sins make it extremely hard to get a reading of this man. But one English Novel linked to the new Pope stands out. Before he was pope, before he was Archbishop, he once taught literature in secondary school, and one English science fiction novel was on his list even back then: The Lord of the World, by Robert Hugh Benson . He's quoted from it recently, as of course had the two Popes before him. I guarantee it is worth a read, once you get past the idea of lighter-than-air jet aircraft (called volors in the language of the novel) and the fact that like George Orwell's 1984, Benson's dystopia took place in our past (supposedly back in 2000), yet the rest is remarkably prescient on where the trends of materialism and psychology were headed. I don't see an actual Lord of the World internat...

An interesting post today asking a generic question, led me to another question. And the sad thing is, in today's America, far too often forgiveness and inclusion is interpreted as judgement an exclusion. When the concept of sin is removed from the world, even forgiveness becomes offensive.

In the so-crazy-this-can't-be-made-up file, 10 people who came back from the dead , people are resurrecting all over the world . If I was a fundamentalist, I'd call it a sign of the end times. As it is though, I think I'd rather call it insufficiently advanced medical science and bigotry against the unwanted.

It's all related . Greed, especially impersonal greed, the type we normally associate with conservative businesspeople, creates material poverty. Material poverty, creates moral poverty, especially of the sexual variety that is so embedded in the New Left. Moral poverty creates drug use. And drug use, destroys the world. If we want to change that, a new evangelization is necessary. And homosexuality is not the biggest threat to the family- the lack of decent work is. The biggest obstacle to a new evangelization, to a new world, is our own willingness to cling to partisan politics at the expense of the Faith.

I'll be posting this link which explains why the Pain-Capable Act proposals aren't set early enough.

Pope Francis is beginning to use the Council of Eight- and he starts by sending Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa to lecture the United States on "The State of the Church". Where I don't find his speech as disheartening as some conservatives do (and they should, as the focus shifts away from sexual sin to economic sin, something that conservatives and East Coast elite Liberals are even worse at than the sad state of marriage in the United States) I do see in it a note of exactly what I don't like about Latin American culture- specifically, the attitude that sin and the work of the devil aren't important, that material poverty is the overriding mission of the Church. It should be the other way around; if we win more hearts to Christ, and fewer to mammon, generosity and charity will win out over material poverty. The problem is we're not doing that, if anything, the economic man has been beaten, robbed, and left for dead- and the Catholic Ch...

Human progress is people. Everything that makes life better, from democracy to the economy to the internet to penicillin was either discovered and built by people. More people means more progress. The inventor of the cure for cancer might be someone's fourth child that they decided not to have. That is the truth being denied by the so-called "progressive left" in this country. But also by the generic Christian Libertarian Right who puts debt reduction ahead of the right to life. Both are making the primary error in making money and short term pleasure (homosexuals and contracepting heterosexuals, that's aimed at you) ahead of people. And the result is a President who ends up having to apologize for putting a scheme to force new customers to crony capitalists into place that actually forced people to sign up with his crony capitalists. It is all connected- the culture of waste.

The best article I've read yet on the complexity of the urban/rural divide and how three century removed from the old country settlers affect attitudes about violence and force in the United States today. The subject is gun control, but you can pick just about any hot button issue and break it down among the 11 North American (Canadian, American, Mexican, the political lines don't follow the cultural lines anymore) cultural nations in this article.

The Canadian 2006 census asked the question whether one's parents were heterosexual or homosexual, married or single. And education attained. The results of the 20% of respondents who answered that question, millions of people, were astounding: high school dropout rates were linked to homosexual parents.

Meet Valerie Jarrett, architect of the shutdown who made sure the barricades and cones were distributed to federal properties around the country months before the shutdown occurred.

The words Liturgical Abuse have a whole new meaning, and I will NEVER complain about anything that goes on in the United States in Mass ever again. Do the words "Novena Solene" translate to something other than the English "Solemn Novena" when interpreted in Brazilian Portuguese?

A simple proposal to reduce abortion from a eugenicist made me realize that the real problem with abortion and contraception in the United States isn't as much the answer as the Question. The question should NOT be "How do we reduce the surplus population?". It should be "What has gone wrong with our economy that human beings are no longer valuable?" The first has a medical solution, if a horrific one. The second, requires an economic solution, which is harder. As a country, we'd rather kill the poor than help them, because it is easier to kill a man today than feed him tomorrow.

A 20 year traffic cop with a Record like this ? Promote him to trainer and have him make videos to sell to other Law Enforcement Organizations!

This brilliant post is a bit libertarian- their entire solution is always "end the fed" but leave centralization of business in charge of the economy. Still, it shows the bigger scam of crony capitalism that is going on, why the government shutdown happened, and one way we could fix it before it all shuts down again in January.

From two rather well respected liberal business magazines , 14 years apart.

Kevin O'Brien gets himself into trouble with a young lesbian who had no sense of history.

Post shutdown voting rules: 1. Priority voting to independents who have no party affiliation 2. Secondary voting to "third parties" that are not D or R 3. Never, ever, under any circumstances or for any reason, vote for an incumbent.

Isn't strong enough. The means corrupt the ends. Do it wrong and it will become wrong.

Horribly anti-Catholic, but this old episode of the Simpsons just eplained Pope Francisco Catholicism to me: It begins with looking inside yourself, contains forgiveness, and ends with bread and wine. And that is enough.

Is that it is based on "We the People" instead of "God the Father", and then immediately gives that power away to the federal government that is free to force any immorality it wants to upon the people.

Just saw this on facebook again and I need to save the link. Nobody seems to know this.

The danger of feminism to human dignity of women has become painfully obvious with the recent Miley Cyrus Twerking Incident.

Was Matthew Shephered killed by other homosexuals , albeit fellow drug dealers whose "homosexuality" was more a product of cocaine use than nature?

I know this is an advertisment but apparently trucks have been hitting bridges in New York because they actually were stupid enough to design roads to only be for cars. And this is the fault of GPS?

The Greeks had the myth of the demon-man Procrustes , who our children don't learn about any more. On the road between Athens and Eleusis, he had an inn. When travelers would stop in, he claimed to have a magic bed that was a perfect fit for everybody- one size fits all. But in reality, the bed was really a rack- and if the traveler was too short, he was stretched to fit; and if the traveler was too tall, either head or feet or both would be cut off. Perhaps the reason this myth is no longer taught, is because it is a bit too close to reality for the modern liberal education. If your faith is too short- unable to handle the great worship of one-size-fits-none liberty- it is stretched to the breaking point. If your faith is too certain- belief in actual good and evil, right and wrong- pieces are cut off until your right and wrong match that of the liberal dictators. Sometimes, myths are not lies. Sometimes they are truths too uncomfortable to teach in any other way. But in th...

Emeritus Papa Benidictus XVI has broken his silence in a big way. Mimicing Pope Francis' engagement with Eugenio Scalfari, publisher of La Repubblica , on Tuesday another letter to a famous Italian athiest appeared in La Repubblica, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI directly answers the charge that he covered up sex abuse , and continues a several year old dialogue with the mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi. It is nice to see the Popes taking on New Atheism in Italy head on- may our Bishops have the courage to do similar elsewhere in the world.

Crisis Magazine today has this wonderful roundup of links from conservatives, liberals, Jesuits, Traditionalists, and Spirit of Vatican II types about the interview with the Pope in America. About the only thing I can say about it, is apparently everybody gets to read their own biases into Pope Francis's words.

I still say Pope Francis needs to hire a team of translators. Seems that if he leaves that job to the press Reporter Bias is invincible . But if I read a translator that I actually trust to be impartial I quickly find the Pope himself contradicting the interview that the Jesuits just released. Or is it truly a contradiction? In the interview, he asked the Bishops to be more pastoral with gay people and less concerned with the subject of abortion. In the second article I linked to, he's talking to a different audience- to medical professionals whose very vocation is rightly the Gospel of Life. Maybe the contradiction doesn't exist in Italian or Spanish. Perhaps it only exists in American English- tainted by the divisiveness of the culture war. ----- Update: They changed the name of the 2nd article on me.

He's a secular saint, that other people claim to want to emulate. But in reality, he was a deeply disturbed individual whose drug-induced psychodelic haze destroyed the morality of an entire generation in an attempt to cover up his own failings.

Mere Spirituality, on the other hand, leaves a lot to be desired.

The slippery slope really does exist but it isn't what people think it is. What if we judged people not on how rich or poor they were, but rather on the philosophy they keep? What if we were able to choose teachers for our children, our co-workers, or who we count as friends, based on the soundness of their philosophy? Better yet, what if we chose our politicians based on the soundness of their philosophy?

More like a cross between Joe McCarthy and James Dean - Orthodox without a cause.

Gears and levers in insects

Because it is first and foremost a lie

The revelation that Richard Dawkins was sexually abused as a child suddenly brings his entire philosophy into sharp focus. Harmed by authority, he's out to destroy the concept of authority, starting with that biggest authority of all, God. But the problem is, authority is a necessary part of the scientific method. Without a trust in authority, certain forms of evidence can't exist. This damages the ability to look at any topic objectively- it creates an invincible bias that destroys truth.

The psychology of Richard Dawkins explained in its entirety: He's suffering from post abuse stress and is trying to deny it. Somehow, that explains his entire philosophy of life to me.

Mark Shea uses the topic of gay Catholics to teach something every Catholic needs to learn, most of all myself: The difference between Teaching the Ideal, and Living Human.

How the roaring mouse gets noticed.

Sign the cause today- tell Home Depot and Lowe's to stop selling plants treated with bee-toxic pesticides . Colony Collapse Disorder has been linked to these pesticides, and we've seen recent mass dieoffs in parking lots in Oregon. Bill S. recently reminded us You know that the human race has the ability to counteract and manipulate nature for our own purposes and that there is nothing wrong with that, right? This proves that there is indeed quite a bit wrong with that concept, and has been for a very long time now. If we don't start living WITH nature instead of AGAINST nature, soon we won't be living at all. Bee pollination is at the root of our agricultural system. There WILL be a massive famine if the bees go extinct. ALL attempts to go against nature always have unintended consequences. Some are easier to see than others. But all are bad.

There is a purpose to procreative sex- and done right, it can take up to 35 years. There is NO purpose to recreational sex. Despite the similarities, the reward outweighs the risk with the first. And is nothing other than mutual prostitution with the second.

Can lead to “depression, substance abuse, social withdrawal, decreased self-esteem and suicidal thoughts.” I believe that This is merely closing the barn door after the horse got out .

A way back to where I was 10 years ago. The problem with gay marriage is not the gay, it is the marriage. Marriage, as concieved by every civilization so far, is inherrantly discriminatory.  Even in the most simple, polyamourous form, it says "I will restrict my sexuality to this one group of people and no other".  Human beings seem to need this level of security. But it is awfully bigotted of government to enforce that discrimination. Therefore civil marriage is incompatible with the Constitution, at least as currently envisioned.  CIVIL MARRIAGE DISCRIMINATES.  There is no way to write a marriage law that does not discriminate, because the whole intent of marriage is to discriminate. Just think of the money we could save on divorce courts, if there was no government recognized marriage!

The only reason any man embraces abortion, is to control women politically.

David Berreby – The obesity era : Diet and exercise is the problem, says the American mantra of why obesity is epidemic, but then how do you explain an obesity epidemic in lab rats, whose diet and exercise is strictly controlled?

And yes, it starts in Oregon with "rehabilitation" of businesses that are not politically correct.

When a person is told to stop a behavior and fails this spectaularily , it's addiction. Predatory sexual behavior of this type is an addiction, I know that from experience. Most of us grow out of this addiction by age 21....

To go to a Doctor when you are ill, proves that you need no doctor when you are well. The News is nothing but exceptions.

USAID Rep Shuts Down Workshop on Abortion Complications : Just refuse to track the deaths and censor anybody who talks about it.

Within 5 hours of finding out current contract is ending, I've been submitted for 4 positions and had a 20 minute interview with a recruiter.

The American Spectator : SlutWalk Insanity : My problem isn't so much with consensual sex, as with undocumented consent.

Suicide’s Tormented Souls | Crisis Magazine : In Belgium, euthanasia is voluntary and can be practiced even on the non-terminally ill. It begs the question- when is temporary unhappiness worth a final solution?

If more Catholics were less hypocritical and spoke up for this truth , there's be far less violence in the world.

Heard at work today: horniness is so overpowering for normal people that they need a reset button after sex, and birth control/plan B provides that reset button. I had never thought of it in those terms before, but that's likely because even when I was a good deal less moral about my sexuality, I was trying to trap women into a relationship by having a child with them. Not the best behavior, but behavior none the less. Once I discovered the Church was more right than wrong about this, I went about it the old fashioned way and got married first and then seriously went to work on having children. Failed at it, but I've always been serious about it. In other words, horniness for me, has always been about procreation, even as a teenager. I think it would be much better to teach pre-teens that these feelings are *specifically* about wanting not just another person that you are attracted to, but a child. There'd be a lot fewer mistakes if that was common knowledge instead...

Than by the collective demand that we need to eliminate the concept of sin.

After-birth abortion: why should the baby live? -- Giubilini and Minerva -- Journal of Medical Ethics : Euthanasia, it's not just for old people anymore.

No genetic origin for homosexuality , and no stability either. Gay is not a death sentence.

Is full of violence and destruction

but hasn't facebook already prooved the business model of building public infrastructure with advertising?

Fr. Hesburgh would probably disagree with this title , but it fits his legacy and theology of heterodoxy and inclusion in sin.

But Pat Robertson's pro-birth, ragamuffin mentality is the real problem hidden below abortion. And yes, a 10th/11 children child responded, with real economics . A massive insult to poor parents and their children.

I've written this before, but never quite so well. So I'm reposting this from a comment I made on Public Catholic . The comment is so general, the topic so important, it deserves a posting of its own. The special thing about Catholic morality for me, the one sentence that brought me back out of atheism and Buddhism, the one thing that makes Catholicism absolutely unique among all the world's religions, can be found explicitly in the first two sections of the English translation of the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate. Hints of it can be found before, it's the reason St Irenaeus used the greek word Katholikos to describe his flock ~1900 years ago, it may even be explicitly written out elsewhere in more ancient languages, but the whole idea of following Truth even when it leads us to paradoxes, even when it leads us to messy solutions, is *extremely* important, and exists in no other system of thought that human beings have come up with. Even science excludes some f...

Homosexuality is real, but is not based in "innate nature" but rather in a lack of suitable sexual partners created by a lack of fertile females.

Marriage over the past 40 years in the secular state has become a shadow of what Sacramental Marriage is. I now advocate for the destruction of civil marriage entirely. The state has NO compellable interest in telling us who can marry whom, who can get divorced, what terms are in a household agreement contract, what employers do with benefits, or who is living in a house I own. Likewise, custody and dependency for children needs to be done away with, it's far to much of a hassle, and parents who think they need the law to keep track of their kids are bad parents. Likewise, since women do not want men in their children's lives anyway, father's rights should be abolished. Then and only then will we have a society that is truly equal under the law.

Those who disagree are not human claims Justice Kennedy.

This former lesbian is 20 years older. I have to wonder if this is where Leah is headed.

I sure hope the Vatican isn't trying to capitalize on the writings of the last three Popes. But within a year of the election of each, Libreria Editrice Vaticana puts out a strongly worded "Decree" claiming copyright on all the writings of the man elected Pope. And it has been strong in enforcing online copyright thereof. This strikes me as being directly against the value of evangelization. The Church exists as the protector of truth. The Church has a right to make sure use of her teachings is in conformity with those teachings to be sure. But to charge for the printing of the Pope's words? That seems to me to be a potential case of simony. And in this day and age where copyright is becoming more of a hinderance than a help in getting ideas out, I think we need a new tool. That's why I've added a Creative Commons license to this blog.

I think I've fallen into a trap. This post is an attempt to get out of the trap. I've given away too much thought share. Only physical gender is provable, because only physical gender exists. This heterosexual/homosexual stuff is just fantasy, from a culture that long ago divorced marriage from procreation and instead, at the insistence of the greeting card companies who made lots of money off of it, made it about romantic eros. Romance is fine when kept in its place. It's a great way to bind parents together for life. Women seem to crave it. But it is not the end-all-be-all of love, let alone human existence. It is possible to survive with no romance at all. It's possible to live without any physical human contact at all. Physical gender is required for pro-creation. But this romance stuff? All hooey.

And you wonder why I say gay marriage is more about the Church than it is about homosexuals.

The True Face of “Happy Divorce” is Quite Ugly | Crisis Magazine : Yep, we've got several single parent families in my wife's daycare- I can guarantee you that the only people who *might* be happy with a divorce are the parents.  The kids never are.

I find it interesting to compare Today's reading from the Catechism with this piece by a homosexual author . Sometimes compassion and empathy are at odds. Irrational empathy MUST yield to rational compassion in those instances. And this is one of them. Having same sex attraction is not wrong. Those who have same sex attraction should be included in every stage in society. But those of us who *actually* have compassion for the homosexual, know that the person perversion hurts the most- is the perverted person who will never know the joy of sex done right, never know the 9 months of worry over a spouse and the future, never know what it is like to hold and care for an infant with the same genetic structure and "new baby smell" that you once had as an infant. And that goes for women who take poison to be artificially sterile as well as homosexuals as well as men who want sex without fatherhood. It's all harmful, not just to greater society- but to the people who en...

For those who think I'm a conservative, check this guy out.

1190: Time | xkcd : Time has come to an end.  Was a heck of a story line,  No spoilers here, though spoilers at the link above.  If you have not yet seen this massive, 3999 frame slow motion silent movie, you owe it to yourself to http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/ ">watch the rerun at your own pace.  I must admit the real explaination- and what genre the story line is- fooled even me.

40 YEARS AFTER ROE V. WADE, PRO-ABORTION ARGUMENTS ARE STILL ILLOGICAL | The Bob Dutko Blog : These 8 arguments have been debunked so many times, in so many different forums, over the last 40 years that I don't really understand why *anybody* bothers to bring them up anymore.

The middle looks to be Your enemy instead of your friend.

Who doubts the theological reality of consent . That's what this massive (it will take you hours to read it) article boils down to. Those who claim that the only sexual ethic is "consenting adults" are really lying to us- they don't believe in sexual ethics at all.

Don't know if this product is available elsewhere or not. Simply Organic Peppermint Flavored Oil is available at Freddy's and at Kroger. It's really a mix of Peppermint Oil and Sunflower Oil, so it's pretty high calorie, but for flavoring, it doesn't take much at all. Two drops to 24 oz of water and ice, makes for a great drink that you'll spend more calories drinking than get from the drink. In addition to that, it's great for helping with asthma.

The older I get, the more I realize how even when I was a college kid, adults were trying to hide Church Teaching from me. I was very young when Humanae Vitae came out and was practically censored by the Baby Boomers, but I was 22 my chapter of the Newman Center was downright pushing homosexuality- we were participating in vigils for _The Body of Christ has AIDS_ and we were inviting prominent gays to talk, even as a strong group of fundamentalists was taking control of the city government and doing such odious things as banning public school teachers from talking about homosexuality at all, encouraging the DA not to prosecute assault and battery cases related to homosexuality, and of course busing all the homeless people to Medford before winter set in and we had to witness people camping in the snow (Winter in Klamath Falls lasts pretty much from November to June, there ain't no such thing as spring there). What a blessing this letter would have been back then , and how much hap...

Because I know the conversation at Public Catholic is drifting outside of Rebecca Hamilton's comfort zone, and because Bill S. does comment here from time to time, I'm going to pick up our conversation where we left off with a couple of comments from Bill that I expect to disappear soon: I disagree. Any or all of Catholicism can be false. Yet, people will benefit from following its rules, regardless of whether its teachings are true or not. Otherwise, Catholicism would not be where it is today. Like with science, the test of the rules are IF THEY WORK. Do they provide an accurate picture of human behavior that can be used for prediction? At one point in my journey, when I was drifting away from the Church, I would have said no, they don't provide an accurate enough picture, even merely for allowing people to benefit from those teachings. Several experiences, particularly with the virtue of Chastity and violations thereof, have convinced me otherwise, so completely that I...

BBC News - Apple faces new China worker abuse claims : 'via Blog this'

What white East Coast Liberals who think they deserve massive multi-million dollar salaries to be CEOs of major corporations, think about everybody else:

We've got myth and morality mixed up. Myth is a method to teach morality; morality itself is rooted in concrete human experience. But for some reason, the myth of secularism is that the myth is the cause of the morality, and thus, to eliminate the myth and force the child to grow up, you must force him to invent his own morality. This, predictably, ends with disaster in the majority of cases.

Three Observations About the Left and Civility : This guy is so far right, he can't see the middle for the left.  But he most certainly does have a point about the anti-tolerance of the left's version of tolerance.

An interesting concept just came up, one I disagree with, but interesting none the less. Late term abortions, are usually really euthanasia. That is, the majority of time they're on non-viable fetuses, or at least, fetuses that are seen to have a less than ideal life. They are done, primarily, on the physically unfit . Now of course, that line gets somewhat blury , for none of us can accurately see the future. Euthanasia should always be opposed for precisely that reason- because even a diagnosis can be wrong. And that's why late term abortions for something "medically wrong" with the fetus should also be opposed- because it's a final solution for a not very finite problem. Still, it never occurred to me to look at these types of abortions-because-of-prenatal-diagnosis as Euthanasia before- and it does make for an interesting side discussion. Can even Kermit Gosnell's and Douglas Karpan's infanticide be considered a form of Euthanasia? I think so...

I find it really interesting when people put down Catholicism as mere opinion, then put forth some suspect science as "reality" with the only proof being that it is "new". Reminds me of Stanford Nutting:

Then you need to run away. There is no point in worshiping a God that demands nothing of you and does not challenge you to change. Heck, there's no point in denying God exists if that life demands nothing of you and does not challenge you to change. The entire point of belief is to change.

I've poked fun at the concept of homophobia before. I'm pretty sure it is a made up illness for the most part. Except for one extremely deadly variety: Homophobic Panic . That's when due to obsessing over homosexuals, a young man, already full of testosterone and as another blogger recently put it, that devil on the shoulder whispering that violence is the solution to what to have for lunch, gets paranoid about somebody who isn't even likely gay, being a gay rapist. This of course leads to a gay bashing incident- and if the "gay" being bashed is armed like George Zimmerman was, it can be a deadly, deadly error.

And in hopes of better maintaining comments and responding to them on this site, sometime in the next 24 hours all comments will be imported to Disqus and Disqus will become the main commenting engine for this page.

Sharing with Stanford: My Dinner with Stanford - YouTube : " " 'via Blog this' Grunky.com gets extremely GRUNKY, in another sense of the term.  I think Theology of MY Body will be a series I'll skip, as well as Grandma's Atheist Cooking.