Outside The Asylum

Be kind and encouraging! He may well one day be a famous Lego artist! And yes, I did use this as a lesson in why you should use a supported camera when doing Lego animation.

And Stanford Nutting starts out with teaching "homodoxy" and the "Nice creed"! In which he proves that modern post Vatican II Catholicism can be as silly as Richard Dawkins!

The grapes of wrath! I think it's time for me to go to Costco tomorrow......

A Catholic liberal admits that Obama was NOT the lesser of two evils in the last election

An interesting discussion today on Flocknote's _Read the Catechism in a Year_ which has swtiched to the YouCat due to copyright issues. The problem? A question about atheism where the YouCat and the Catechism seem to be in conflict. I don't have the question numbers in this form of the Youcat, but the relevant passage in the CCC is 2140. Fad Atheists are certainly sinning: But that's not the group the YouCat is talking about. YouCat is talking about rational atheism, which can be a path to the faith, and cradle atheism, which is a form of positive faith formed in the 2nd and 3rd generation of an atheist family. I'm not sure rational atheism doesn't fall under CCC2140. In fact, I'd say the more study is done, the more the rational atheist will be drawn to the faith- and the more of a sin this becomes. But that is a reason for conversion. And cradle atheism, I can't imagine them not getting into purgatory- for the same reason I reject the theological t...

License-plate readers let police collect millions of records on drivers | The Center for Investigative Reporting : Hope they're using either bigtable or a good relational model on the database- I can easily see this breaking the 2TB limit regularly.

Stanford Nutting, who Stands for Nothing, tells us how we need to write the commandments in Jello. And here's the same artist on The Journey Home, being the type of Christian that Atheists Hate.

Marriage » Against Equality : The Greater Than movement....

These guys do . Almost all of the poverty in the world can be traced to the greed of the 100 richest families. There are plenty of resources. It is only the greed of others that keeps people poor.

or maybe should . What is the name for the modern genre of an interview invented by cutting apart words somebody actually said and using them to answer questions the interviewer made up? That is, other than the evening news.

Cardinal attends AGLO, refuses communion to Rainbow Sash leader - 5647 - Gay Lesbian Bi Trans News - Windy City Times : I've long said that a sign of being too extreme, is when you think the middle of the political road is the opposite side.

LIVE FREE AND DIE : Sam Rocha echos my issues with the second Fortnight For Freedom

Duke University Graduate and Rich First Worlder to poor women of the world To eliminate poverty, eliminate the poor

Then I saw this. Ok, so maybe his "Humans are good at memes" idea is sound; but did he really have to subject us to his LSD dream about it?

One of the strangest symptoms, or at least most puzzling to me, is the post sexual revolution problem with delayed gratification. If you're not familiar with the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment , do yourself a favor and click over to Wikipedia to read about it. The earlier Trinidad candy experiment may hold a clue, but it was a very small statistically insignificant sample size. The clue: Children whose fathers have left the home, did poorly. The more recent Rocester Experiment suggests that children who have been lied to, who have been let down by adults, have a harder time with delayed gratification. One thing I noticed growing up in the 1970s, was the odd tendency of sexually promiscuous adults to be less than honest with children. This does lead me to wonder if the sexual revolution has had a negative economic side effect on Americans and Europeans with respect to delayed gratification, which is of course a predictor of economic and personal success.

To the type of homosexuals that certain commenters here claim shouldn't exist .

In the old comic strip and 1950s TV Show, and to a lesser extent the reimagined nostalgia movies, the running joke in The Addams Family is "we are normal, it is the rest of the world that is insane".  This confidence permeated every motive of Gomez and Morticia, and was the parenting style they used with the entire extended family. All multiculturalism suffers from the same arrogance. Ethnic groups refuse to assimilate based on a version of the syndrome. It occurs to me that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, this syndrome would have been a part of the formative years of the researchers who invented homophobia.  This insult and slur has been extemely effective in confusing young Americans.  But it is stll an extreme minority denying basic biology who wants their lifestyle to be considered normal.  And they are willing to destroy everybody else to accomplish it.

This past spring I was able to get my child to enter into a science fair with normal kids. His was the only entry from the special needs program. I have finally created a google photo album of his project.

A while back Leah Libresco mentioned that one new artificial way to increase empathy and understanding was to install Dictionary of Numbers in Chrome. This post is solely to find out what the Dictionary of numbers does with 56 million people. ----- After publishing, I now know that we have killed approximately [≈ population of Italy (nation)] in fetuses through abortion since 1973.

Without strong women like Dawn Eden we can't heal. We simply can't. She depended on the Saints, and I have little doubt that her story will become a story of sainthood someday.

An interesting decription about the logical, esthetic, and moral problems that result from modern gnosticism.

The real problem with the Church's teaching on homosexuality has nothing to do with the Church's teaching on homsexuality and everything to do with how we think we are percieved by others (funny, yes, I'm rather proud of the fact that I come FOURTH in my wife's priority list). And that's why gay marriage is NOT a solution- even for the homosexual community- and maybe it would allow us a chance to focus on the spiritual rot in the American Culture itself that affects a lot more than just gay people and destroys a lot more than just traditional families with sexual and fiscal attacks.

Even of the supernatural variety. As we receive news that Blessed Pope John Paul II has had a 2nd miracle attributed to his intercession confirmed by the medical community, it seems appropriate to me to Review the story of his first miracle from the woman who recieved it.

So you THINK you know that the Church's sacramental marriage is based in religion alone? What is Marriage?-Sociological Benefits Recent studies have surprisingly shown what most people know by instinct- that children raised by their biological parents is the ideal- and that only happens with one man and one woman. The State and Marriage - what is the secular interest in Marriage? Why should the state care at all? Revisionist logic - debunking the irrational thinking of the movement to redefine marriage And finally, after all the secular arugment, we get to the religious reason- spiritual battle. But I find it interesting that the LAST is last. Spirituality follows REASON, Reason comes first.

Deployment to war doesn't figure in majority of military suicides - latimes.com : Apparently, outside of Chestertonian jokes and in the real American army, it is rather the opposite.  Apparently death-by-combat-with-the-enemy is as popular as death by cop, but when a disappointing post far from the front comes through instead, suicide is common.

And only those who are deep in history know what a noble suicide is and how incredibly superficial the symptoms of gay marriage and abortion really are . The Suicide Note is fascinating- a man who seemingly had everything to live for, creates a human sacrifice at a Catholic Cathedral in a country that is quickly becoming very secular, over the protests of the common man. His note points to his "recent writings", which include an interesting discussion stating that gay marriage doesn't matter because in 15 years, Islamics will be in the majority in France and quickly, under Shariah Law, enact the death penalty for homosexuality.

Hollywood Accounting: Darth Vader Not Getting Paid, Because Return Of The Jedi Still Isn't Profitable | Techdirt : And you wondered how the rich got to be rich.  I'd consider this fraud, but this gives honest con jobs a bad name.

Hard to believe somebody with Asperger's could do what I've done, but I've done it. Two more duties left- the breakfast/membership drive at St. Clare's on June 30th, and the *beginning* of the July meeting, and then I'm done. John Clare Council 15485 is finishing the first year with Star Council award, Columbian Award, and an active Food for Families program. And positive in the bank. I've birthed this baby, now to watch it grow!

Bad Catholic has a discussion up about women who were denied abortions and the problems with a recent study of them. My problem with all such studies, on both sides, is that the people being studied are self-selecting, and thus, there's a huge amount of politics and confirmation bias going on.

Self-sacrifice and a lack of selfishness would change my mind on a huge number of political issues. Martyrdom squads would quickly change my mind on unjust wars. Abstinence (romantic 13th century style, think Dante and Beatrice, or I guess more appropriately, David and Jonathan from the Bible) marchers in gay pride parades would change my mind on gay marriage. Bringing back the Students Today Are Not Ready For Sex abstinence sex-ed program would be a huge improvement over all the other programs I've seen, including other abstinence programs. Also, we need "virginity promise" rings for guys to be given by mothers. Campaigning to bring back the Philadelphia Nun's Loophole would change my mind on the Tea Party protesters. Giving up getting high and not trying to be superman and stop commuter trains would change my mind on the Occupy Protesters. Taking a cab home would certainly change my opinion of people who get drunk away from home. For that matter, people over...

June 17, 1462: The Battle of the Blood Drinkers | Crisis Magazine : "many who fight for the Faith are not among the faithful" A lesson from history

A Woman is Made to Be A Woman : Catholic Stand : 'via Blog this'

Celebrating Fathers: Our Earthly Fathers – Guest Post from Dr. Paul Gondreau | Image Books: Publishing Books of Catholic Interest : A post about a father who has it far worse than I do. Christopher was 18 months before his language delay became apparent enough to do something about.  He was 26 months when we got the MRI that diagnosed Cerebral Palsy.  He was 7 years when we had the MRI that confirmed that the reason we couldn't potty train was due to the spina bifida rather than the CP (yes, we actually blamed not being able to potty train on the language delay). And I wouldn't miss a minute.

The real depth is that selfish living leads to death. Oh, maybe not physical death, though many sins are physically and bodily dangerous. But spiritual death and the loss of all the relationships we hold dear.

What fatherhood used to be:

This libertarian seems to think so and after I sift the rhetoric from the reality, I have a tendency to agree. The one thing that I agree with the gay agenda on is that by the principle of subsidiarity, the government has no place in the home. Not just the bedroom, but the home. And by no place, I mean no place at all- giving tax breaks to some households over other households due to a contract that bears no relation to traditional, sacramental marriage whatsoever is discrimination. The concept of consent is equally ridiculous; it always turns eventually into people bringing the problems of the home into court with the silliness that is the concept of divorce- a concept that would entirely go away if we'd just do away with ALL the legal protections for marriage. On this day when we celebrate the apparently antiquated and anachronistic concept of a Father, a role that almost no man under the age of 70 seems to be able to fulfill anymore in this age of feminism where all men are ...

Atheist Who Blamed Faith for Sexual Abuse Forced to Resign for Sexual Messages » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog : Of course, I could say the same sometimes about *good with God* when it comes to the outdated sacradotal idea of clericalism.

Prosecutors Push For Anti-Phone-Theft Kill Switches - Slashdot : Once again government lawyers in the United States prove themselves to be utterly clueless technically.

Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae : Because I had reason to look it up for an entirely different discussion with a libertarian Catholic.

What About the Other Kids? : Yet another look at the extremely sad state of post-Catholic abstinence education.

GK Chesterton once said that the form of patriotism "My Country right or wrong" is like declaring "My Country Drunk or Sober". On today's flag day, I offer this group of Youtube videos tracing the development of Our Country. From the original dream: (note the 4th Degree Knights of Columbus present as President George W. Bush accepts a visit from Pope Benedict, and this was actually on CNN a few years back) To this speech by Red Skelton: To the nightmare that really began back in the 1960s: That in three short decades became this: Which has become this nightmare And this nightmare: Which of course recently broke into the news as this: (obviously the people who believe this statement don't understand how VOIP works- retrieving the backbone logs for a given phone call, once identified, is trivial for anybody who actually has the security access the NSA does) And of course, that finished to this: The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes , Indec...

What no-fault divorce has *really* done to more than 50% of my generation. Ministering to Children of Divorce by Elizabeth Marquardt :

“To Forgive My Father” Children of Divorce and the Parable of the Prodigal Son : "Or, better yet, perhaps we parents can work on our marriages a little harder and stop putting our kids in the role of being our emotional/spiritual caretakers." I don't remember the conversation entirely, but I was recently challenged on this subject.  And I had to come to the conclusion that divorce ALWAYS harms the child, ALWAYS harms the abandoned spouse. This might explain why, a bit.

I'm begining to really like Frank Beckworth , if only because he is as depressed as I am about the baby boomer and hippie notion that nobody should ever question progress.

I am doing the "Read the Catechism in a year" program.  It was damaged halfway through by copyright issues.  The Bishops conference, or their lawyers, apparently did not like the idea of sending out the catechism in e-mail a small chunk at a time.  So they switched to the YouCat, the "Youth Catechism" and made hyperlinks out of the real Catechism references. I cannot help but think that today's topic, the principle of subsidiarity, is pertinent: @CatechismAPI - 1883-1896 In the 21st century in the United States of America, subsidiarity is illegal.  The supremacy of federal law dictates one culture, one law, in the States, and heaven help the State, the City, or the County that steps out of line.  And because the Bishops have chosen to nearly abandon the Imprimatur and the Nihil Obstat in favor of American copyright law, even a lay New Evangelization project like Read The Catechism in a Year is affected by the centralized groupthink. Clericalism has done so m...

When you replace the holy virtue of tolerance with forced agreement it becomes intolerance. The only difference between a person insisting on tolerance equaling acceptance and the bigot refusing to give in to such bullying, is honesty- and the honesty is on the side of the bigot.

One of the things that really has bugged me for a few years now is that after reading GK Chesterton, all of my internet arguments fill me with the strangest feeling of Deja Vu. What he wrote for newspapers, essays that were eventually collected into collection books, were on exactly the same topics we are *still* arguing 80+ years later. Consider this chapter, if you will, from All Things Considered . The first part deals with the problem of fiscal libertinism. The only significant thing that has changed in this since Chesterton was writing is that the financial capital of the world has switched from London to New York. But the second part of the chapter, merely labeled "Science", deals with a pamphlet promoting scientific atheism. I'd love to find the pamphlet that caused him to write it, but based on what he chooses to argue about, _The God Delusion_ from Richard Dawkins appears to be not quite as good as a rewrite. This does not bode well for either the New Atheist...

I've noticed this in my own life and in the lives of others quite strongly as of late. It seems that our total *real wealth*, those things that we value as human beings, are limited by the utter utopian daily allotment of time. We can be spiritually rich, but that leaves us very little time to pay attention to the material needs of our families and ourselves. Or we can be materially rich, and that leaves us very little time to pay attention to any abstract studies of philosophy and theology. At first glance, the clergy seem to have defeated this- but in Catholicism, what has really happened is that the clergy are spiritually rich and materially very very poor. I wonder what the salary of a Bishop is? I know your average parish priest earns about $12,000/year- below the poverty level for a single person. Every time I hear somebody speak against the vow of celibacy, I wonder if they know how materially poor the clergy really is.

Amazing! An in depth look at the virtue and curse of tolerance- without any reference to the political use of the intolerance of liberal toleration.

Mark Shea has an interesting post up related to the logical fallacy and sin of ad hominem arguments, and how we quite often in an internet flame war treat the other side as not a human being, but as an object. I know I do this quite often; my intent in arguing online is often not for the person I'm arguing against (as I know I'll never convert anybody anyway) but rather so that lurkers (in old usenet slang, a lurker is somebody reading a flame war but not participating themselves) get both sides of the argument fleshed out as completely as possible. To do this, I often take the role of the crazy boy against the bully . NEVER take one of my arguments online personally- they aren't intended for you alone; they are intended to make others think. If by some miracle I make you think as well, then fine and dandy, but that's not my purpose. That, in combination with the need for more time to do what I need to do and the lack of odd spam in eastern pictographic character ...

Focus only on the sin of non-procreative sex, you may miss the beauty of procreatie sex

Or rather, Two do . And risk their lives to file amicus briefs with the Supreme Court. Why risk their lives? Because Gay Activists are NOT kind to those who oppose them.

As a boy scout troop marches in a gay pride parade - that slipery slope must be very slick indeed. I wonder if scout uniforms mean the same in homosexual circles that they do among a certain class of heterosexuals.

Bad Catholic , In a several month series of posts , Crunches the numbers on contraception and abortion and indeed finds a coorelation, though not a causation, between contraception and abortion. And it is NOT the one the family planning people think.

Here is the reason bullying hasn't worked for the LGBT activists, Women Priests, the alphabet soup squad, the Know Nothings, the KKK, and other such organizations that have tried it with varying degrees of violence. It doesn't work because whatever your cause, it just serves to make those you are working against *more* determined to defeat you. And if you are numerically inferior, such as LGBT activists or the Lavender Scare , while you might make a splash for a day, in the long run people are going to get tired of your violence and turn against you. It is tiresome, so maybe you should take a lesson from Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King instead. And *start* by making sure everybody supporting your issue, swears off of violence and name calling.

As Mark Shea explains in Crisis Magazine- Consequentialism is the favorite sin of Americans. I must say, including myself- I'm willing to tolerate say, the minor evil of estate taxes, in order to provide every American a chance to own property at age 18 regardless of capability.

Eve Tushnet comes up with the very intriguing point that due to the sexual revolution, us heterosexuals have forgotten how to have friends. She claims that we need homosexual Catholics to teach us that Agape, Phileos, and Storge are just as important as forms of love as Eros. I would tend to agree, though I'm at a point in my life where I blame Eros for a large portion of why I went astray in my 20s and didn't recover until my 40s. And here's a post on why gay marriage is irrational- written by a homosexual man .

Because Disabled People are People Too.  These pictures were shot at the Padres v Orioles game for OD4 Little League Challenger game.  Just about every player on both teams are the unfit.  But I would say every one of them deserved to be born. I and everybody in my family are among the unfit . Huge numbers of people I know are unfit. There are mothers who would abort an autistic child if they could have . My son has Cerebral Palsy. One of my best friend's children has CP.