Good without God?

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy:



Yes, I just started a post on Atheism with a link to the Catholic Encyclopedia.  But there is a good reason for that.



This list of 14 items is what is needed to be good in a post-Christian society.  It is something I believe both the left and the right have failed at.

The 14 works of Mercy:

• To feed the hungry;
• To give drink to the thirsty;
• To clothe the naked;
• To harbour the harbourless;
• To visit the sick;
• To ransom the captive;
• To bury the dead.
• To instruct the ignorant;
• To counsel the doubtful;
• To admonish sinners;
• To bear wrongs patiently;
• To forgive offences willingly;
• To comfort the afflicted;
• To pray for the living and the dead.

These are the basics. This is what Christianity came to do for the world. If you wish to claim to be Good without God, these are the basics that you MUST cover.

Gencon, the Gender difference convention, threatens to boycott Indiana

Game Con Threatens to Leave Indiana Over Conscience Protection Bill:



To quote Deep Thought talking to the Philosopher's Union in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when they threatened a strike, "And just who will THAT inconvenience?"

Final Thoughts in Three Parts, Crossposted from Intel Internal Blogs

Things that were not explained adequately upon conversion from CW to ICE.

1. Bonuses- it was thought by my management that QPB applied to all blue badge employees including ICE. If I had known I wasn't going to get bonuses, I would have asked for higher base pay.
2. Vacation Time- MUST be taken while still an employee, and unlike what the recruiter who wrote my job offer told me, cannot be used to extend your final week. Any unused vacation time will be lost at end of contract, by policy. In addition, apparently you lose it at the end of the year, I really should have taken WW52 off, then the sting would not be so bad now.
3. ICE as a stepping stone to full employment at Intel is a lie. I couldn't get anybody, despite spending many hours on networking, to give my resume a second look. I even learned a new tool in this contract that is internal and can only be used at Intel and is completely worthless outside of Intel. No matter, I've had many interviews outside of Intel, and will land well, but I'll keep this in mind the next time I am tempted to take a short term contract at Intel.
4. Being a blue badge, if you are ICE, still means you're treated more like a resource than like a human by human resources. Many policies are used to reverse decisions that your manager, who is working more closely with you, has made.
   

Software Project Management At Intel in non-software divisions

1. Brooks Law is almost unheard of at Intel. Hardware Managers think that all software projects can be completed in less than six months, and therefore throw contingent workers at the project. Since software estimates, in general, are 75% engineering and 25% new science, they are wildly inaccurate. When the project inevitably fails to be complete in the first six months, the temptation is to break Brook's Law by adding more contingent workers. The time to ramp up CWs on the project of course exceeds the time to complete the project if you kept software engineers working for more than 18 months at a time.
2. Agile or Waterfall- Pick one and stick to it. This crazy combination used on software projects in hardware divisions is ridiculous, as is the general lack of written requirements.
3. It's hard to hit a moving target- input data integrity must be respected. If you don't have input data integrity, then there will be bugs. Bugs add complexity. Bugs make software estimates inaccurate. Lather, rinse, repeat.

On the new diversity initiative

1. There is no link between surface appearance and how a person thinks, or how capable they are. None at all. While this makes the apparent racism of the past a mistake, this also makes modern affirmative action programs equally racist and invalid.
2. There is no link between religion, sexual orientation, or disability and how a person thinks, or how capable they are. Such factors should not enter into hiring or promotion decisions at all, and when they do, that is what Intel needs to eliminate from the system.
3. There IS a link between certain forms of mental illness and the ability to innovate. Since mental illness affects the brain directly, having somebody with a well controlled mental illness on your team increases diversity of thought, which leads to innovation.
4. I believe that the uncertainty surrounding the diversity initiative was a part of my failure to convert to FTE. Not necessarily outright discrimination against a white male, and due to my autism I fall into one of the protected groups anyway and HR is well aware of that. But I believe the way the diversity initiative was announced, and the weeks of confusion surrounding it before BK finally clarified his position, coming at the same time I was trying to convert to FTE, meant that I had a harder time of trying to get my resume noticed and find open, externally advertised jobs for my skillset.

Final Thought and contact info

While my search to convert to FTE at Intel has failed, my external search has succeeded. I have at least one, maybe two job offers in hand; I will likely be back to work sometime between March 25 to March 30. This posting will be crossposted to Inside Blue before I leave Intel. Comments section below is open.

What kind of idiot doesn't know how to use an email client?

Or that any given e-mail client can get e-mail from more than one account?

H/T David Gulliver

A simple answer to a complex problem

Recently there have been many data breaches resulting in a new form of identity theft:  Tax identity theft.  For the Archdiocese of Portland, this recently (in the last two tax years) hit people who had child protection background checks, and I just recently found out, Knights of Columbus Councils have now also been hit.

Stealing just one number, the TIN (taxpayer identification number, usually the social security number or employer identification number) allows a thief to file a false tax return with the IRS, and usually pocket whatever refund they can before it is discovered, especially if done early in the tax season.

Which forces the real owner of the TIN to file on paper and waste all kinds of time to work around the affidavits and law enforcement notifications.

I have an easy solution.  Let taxpayers investigate the matter themselves.  Allow any taxpayer the ability to, with the affidavit form, pull all filings for the past 10 years under their TIN.  They can then use this information to swear out complaints and get local law enforcement involved.  Or if local law enforcement can't be bothered, perhaps put a real damper on the whole process by allowing vigilante justice.

When you work to reduce suffering, why are you doing it?

Compassion for the suffering person requires suffering along with the person. If you are working to reduce suffering out of true care for the other person and their eternal soul, you are fine with that sacrifice of your own suffering to do so. Those that are working to reduce suffering in others to reduce their own suffering, are the ones who come up with solutions like euthanasia and abortion- because they do not care for the one suffering, they just want that person to never bother them again with their suffering.

This is Dignicide- this is reducing the worth of another person to only their suffering.

Is the Pope infallible when speaking ex carro volante?

Pope Francis has a nasty habit of saying weird things when he is speaking ex carro volante. It is my belief that he should be sharing his jet plane rides with a doctor, an O2 sensor, and an oxygen bottle, not with reporters.

I submit the following idea; that perhaps, having only one and a half lungs, the strange misquotes we see on airplanes from this Pope may be due to cabin air pressure being about the same as living on top of a mountain, at 5000 to 8000 feet. And that there is truly no reason whatsoever to believe that the Pope's ex cathedra infallibility extends to ex carro volante- from flying cars.

My new term for anti-life activities: Dignicide

I somehow feel this new term is actually very fitting. There is no dignity in suicide, the doctor forced to prescribe euthanasia suffers a loss of dignity, same with abortion, there is no dignity in either procuring nor providing an abortion. Thus Dignicide fits quite well- the death of dignity.

It fits war quite well, there is very little dignity in war, and what dignity there is, gets stripped away rather quickly as property and lives are lost.

It also fits the death penalty- for killing the perpetrator, whose very crime robbed him of human dignity, will not undo the crime; and only serves to remove dignity from our legal system.

But even in non-lethal portions of the anti-life movement, the indignity of poverty, or the destruction of the family, or the indignity of reducing sex down to only recreative and never procreative (whether with heterosexual contraception or homosexuality)- these too are dignicide. I suggest that we in the pro-life movement should adopt this new term, and quite quickly.