Ephilei

My Sexy Scripts

2009-08-20T18:05:00.000-05:00

A while back I wrote a couple greasemonkey scripts. Well, someone was emotionally moved by my javascript prowess visible on my profile at userscripts.org and wrote me this:

Greetings
My name is miss Asiya Majzoub i am 24 years old never married. l saw your profile today on ( www.userscripts.org) when i was searching for a foreign partner, who will help me and after going through it many times then l made up my mind to contact you as my friend, Beside i have a special something i would like to discuss with you.
So l want you to write back to me through my email address so that l will give you my picture and for you to know who l am

At least modern spam is getting more entertaining.

Heterosexist Hypocrisy

2009-03-06T15:04:00.000-06:00

A new standard for hypocrisy is being set this week. In the past couple decades, homosexuality has reached new highs of acceptance in the West. For every step pro-gay people, anti-gay people also take a progressive step. First gays were spawns of Satan. Then they moved up to the status of still evil humans. In CA in the 70s during a battle to allow gays to not be automatically fired, the conservatives said gay teachers were recruiting kids to be gay. Now the fad (in most places) is that gays are victims of bad parenting and are morally obligated to change their orientation. The most progressive anti-gays are saying gays and their allies are committing a minor sin, mainly an error in judgment. Until now, I believed they were honestly changing their beliefs, not just their rhetoric.

But first some context. In the battle over gay marriage in CA last fall, many religious leaders, notably LDS, said they did not object to the rights given by civil unions (which was not under debate and the majority supported). "The Church does not object to rights for same-sex couples regarding hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights."(source) Sounds good, right?However, here in IL without civil unions, they said the civil union bill was immoral and personally threatening. The Vatican, which is against capital punishment, said an exception should be made for killing gays. No joke.

This week, Exodus, the very people who say they love the sinner, traveled to Uganda, are supported the current law that criminalizes gays, not for "sin" behavior but merely for being atttracted to the same sex. Even celibate, gay Catholics there are threatened. The punishment? Replace the current prison sentence and send them to Exodus for therapy where Exodus will rake in the bucks. Become straight or go to prison.

What scares me most is this isn't old school backwardness. This is the same people who counseled a friend of mine. The same that hosted a conference for my pastor. What horror lies in the recession of hearts.

The Sin of Marriage

2009-03-01T10:58:00.000-06:00

The hypocrisy of Christians and marriage has bothered me for years. Besides ignoring what the Bible clears says on divorce, they likewise ignore 1 Cor 7.

8 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am.
9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

... anyone who reads and understands the Bible properly* must know that the Church (and all Christian leaders) should, like St. Paul, be teaching that the highest calling for all Christians is to celibacy, while marriage, even though a sacremant as well as a civil right, should be seen only as the last resort for those Christians whose libidos are such that they cannot remain celibate. trans-cendence.blogspot.com

I would replace "properly" with "literally." Stripping the passage from her context, we have only a harsh command against marriage, same-sex or heterosexual, as a last resort. Marriage is only for the weak Christians. I won't even touch Paul's anti-sex feelings! Yet Christians also strip the "gay" and "transgender" verses from their contexts believing that if an act itself is spoken against, Scripture doesn't care who or what motivation is involved.

The Bible contains 6 admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love heterosexuals. It’s just that they need more supervision. - Unknown

TransChristians Update

2009-03-01T09:22:00.003-06:00

New pages:

Walt Heyer
Marissa Dainton
Response to Whitehead's Free Endorsement

I've been busy creating another website, http://genderadvocates.org, for Illinois Gender Advocates. Proof that I can build a "real" website, if I want.

TransChristians.org updates

2009-02-17T15:41:00.000-06:00

I've been updating a lot, but hadn't created an announcement. The main deal is the Intersex section which applies the existence of intersex people on philosophy about sex. In an altnerate form, I wrote up a whole chapter about it.

Also,Jerry Leach contacted me with a take down notice for his own articles. Seems he doesn't want the public knowing anything about him. I can't say I'm surprised as reading his old site exposed a lot of dirt.

I wrote up my own transgender biography in Coming Up Queer.

It's Official: Evolution Is Christian

2009-02-13T09:52:00.001-06:00

And Intelligent Design is a "cultural" phenomenon. The Vatican this week stated this week that evolution is compatible with Christianity and her Scriptures. Apparently Aquinas even believed in micro-evolution of related species a thousand years back. Since more than half of Christians worldwide are Roman Catholic, most Christians are technically evolutionists. Unfortunately, most Catholics are more Protestant in their sense of authority.

Update:
Pew has a handy study (US only) and Catholics already lead the herd. Nice to see my Orthodox brethren just behind them!

XGW Guest Post

2009-02-11T22:41:00.001-06:00

Hmm, what a nice post. I should get in touch with that author.

Ex-Gay Watch: Little Boy Lost

Understanding Heterosexist Marriage Values

2009-02-06T18:46:00.003-06:00

Same-sex marriage is being debated in New Hampshire this session.

Republican state Rep. Daniel Itse said gay marriage would cause out-of-wedlock births to rise in New Hampshire, adding that the debate itself and civil unions have already cheapened marriage.

“Young people now see no need to get married,” Itse said. “It just doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

I'm not defending his argument, but here's where I think he is coming from:

As a conservative, I don't like change. Change in general is a confession that we got it wrong the first time. Therefore our idea of marriage was wrong because it was incomplete. We can no longer look at marriage as a perfect institution (something controlled only by divine, supernatural, or untouchable powers) but as an institution controlled by us regular humans. Further, for generations we've been adding value into marriage. Every heterosexual wedding we celebrated and built it up. If marriage changes, some of that value will transfer but some will not.

Again, not to defend his point of view but this is my attempt to understand it. I also think he's using his words as a euphemism for "letting in those dirty fagots will soil the exclusivity of our club" but I won't go there. Being pro same-sex marriage, I have a response to each idea.

For the first, consider that marriage is a human institution. As a Christian I believe it is also divine (as most things in Christianity blend divinity and humanity together) but even my cursory knowledge of anthropology clearly teaches me that marriages are dictated by the culture that performs them. Given that fact, better to embrace marriage's human element than pretend it does not exist.

For the second, I think altering our cultural definition of marriage will subtract some value. But combine it with the fact that allowing another 9 million americans to marry will add to our value of marriage. When the math is done, we end up ahead. Besides, in a few generations we'll get that value back anyway.

Post a Secret

2009-01-26T16:27:00.002-06:00

Because I'm a professional IT person, electronic stores give me comfort because I can ask stupid questions without embarrassment.

Jesus Makeover

2009-01-24T18:18:00.002-06:00

This video demonstrates what I have noticed for some time - the femininty of all our current depictions of Jesus. Even though Christians aren't aware of it, our collective unconscious tells us that the gender of Jesus, as the one we are all women and men called to emulate, must be androgynous. That androgyny is reflected in our art. Remove the beard, and suddenly Jesus looks very feminine.

The video also points out how much difference a beard makes. As transmen know, facial hair overrides any amount of other feminine appearance or behavior. Our minds are inclined to assign manhood much stronger than womanhood. We are basically looking for an excuse to believe someone is a man. A mathematical equivalent would be that for every gender cue we assign a number and the total of cues assign gender. Man is, say, 10 and woman is -10 and we start at zero. The genders are equal though as every man cue is worth 5 and women cues are worth only -1. Reaching womanhood requires perfection; reaching manhood requires only one or two cues. That's why it's so much easier for transmen to pass than transwomen.

Al Sharpton and Righteous Indignation

2009-01-16T13:37:00.002-06:00

Proof that you don't need to be pro-gay to be pissed with heterosexist politics.

“It amazes me when I looked at California and saw churches that had nothing to say about police brutality, nothing to say when a young black boy was shot while he was wearing police handcuffs, nothing to say when the they overturned affirmative action, nothing to say when people were being delegated into poverty, yet they were organizing and mobilizing to stop consenting adults from choosing their life partners,” Sharpton told a packed audience on Jan. 11.

“There is something immoral and sick about using all of that power to not end brutality and poverty, but to break into people’s bedrooms and claim that God sent you,” Sharpton added.

...

“I am tired of seeing ministers who will preach homophobia by day, and then after they’re preaching, when the lights are off they go cruising for trade,” Sharpton said, his words generating a roar of response from the crowd.

...

“We know you’re not preaching the Bible, because if you were preaching the Bible we would have heard from you,” Sharpton said. “We would have heard from you when people were starving in California, when they deregulated the economy and crashed Wall Street you had nothing to say. When [alleged Ponzi schemer Bernie] Madoff made off with the money, you had nothing to say. When Bush took us to war chasing weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there you had nothing to say. … But all of a sudden when Proposi

http://www.sovo.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=23441

Hat tip, Box Turtle.

English vs Eskimo-Aleut

2008-12-18T15:16:00.002-06:00

English has more words for snow than the Inuits. Who knew?

I scored as good with Islam+Paganism (6/7) as JudeoChristianity (6/7).

Demonstration of evolution

2008-12-11T12:29:00.003-06:00

This is fascinating.

And a good demonstration of how a system can input random data and output ordered data.

Vatican Supports Capital Punishment for Gays

2008-12-03T11:41:00.005-06:00

From Box Turtle,

— as part of a what it sees as a consistent “pro-life” ethic — opposes the death penalty. But the Vatican’s representative in the United Nations is opposing a measure calling on governments around the world to decriminalize homosexuality — including countries which impose the death penalty on gays:

Archbishop Celestino Migliore said the Vatican opposed the resolution because it would “add new categories of those protected from discrimination” and could lead to reverse discrimination against traditional heterosexual marriage.

“If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations,” Migliore said. “For example, states which do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure,” Migliore said.

The proposed measure does nothing to extend rights to anyone — unless you consider the elimination of the death penalty, imprisonment or fines for homosexuality a special right. Because that’s all the proposed resolution does: it only calls for decriminalization.

Actions like this make me realize how atrocities like the Holocaust and Inquisition came about. When you let the ends justify the means and your ethics contradict logic and simple human compassion there's no telling where you'll turn up. You would think a group with so much emphasis on the suffering of Jesus would realize that if faced with receiving pain or inflicting pain, (which in this case is a straw argument anyway) the Christian response is to receive it with open arms. I have long wondered why Jesus was not angered by greed or adultery or non-believers but whenever Jesus encountered a hypocrite, hellish fury arose. I might be beginning to understand.

Most countries that criminalize homosexuality with death lump transexuality together with it so I view this as an attack against my transexual brothers and sisters as well. I can't be angry though. I'm too shocked for anger. Instead I'm devastated that in the 21st century the world's most powerful religious leader would rather kill queer people rather than "be pressured" to let us marry.

Fraudulent and Invisible

2008-11-17T12:44:00.002-06:00

Irony.

Obama on His Faith

2008-10-23T10:20:00.003-05:00

Not bad. He's no theologian, but it's not bad.

My father, who returned to Kenya when I was just two, was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist. My mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was probably one of the most spiritual and kindest people I've ever known, but grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a consequence, so did I.

It wasn't until after college, when I went to Chicago to work as a community organizer for a group of Christian churches, that I confronted my own spiritual dilemma.

I was working with churches, and the Christians who I worked with recognized themselves in me. They saw that I knew their Book and that I shared their values and sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me that remained removed, detached, that I was an observer in their midst.

And in time, I came to realize that something was missing as well -- that without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone.

And if it weren't for the particular attributes of the historically black church, I may have accepted this fate. But as the months passed in Chicago, I found myself drawn - not just to work with the church, but to be in the church.

For one thing, I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here today. Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope.

And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship -- the grounding of faith in struggle -- that the church offered me a second insight, one that I think is important to emphasize today.

Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts.

You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

...

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what's possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It's the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

Source.

Bias & The Election

2008-10-22T11:13:00.004-05:00

I make a point of avoiding politics more or less and I make a stronger point of knowing about our personal biases. Project Implicit is one of the great tools for doing that. It simply measures what feeling, positive or negative, you automatically assign to a person or idea. Possible scores are "slight," "moderate," "strong," or "no preference". What's remarkable is that it completely bypasses what you actually think about the issue. I.e, you might think you're not racist at all but it reveals accurately your subconscious. I recommend this to anyone with ten minutes to spare. It just might change your life.

They recently added a test to score feelings about Obama and McCain combined with race which I took. I scored "no preference" for black and white preference and a slight preference for Obama. I'm surprised by both results. Several years ago I took a test exclusively for race and scored "moderate preference" for whites over blacks so I'm surprised to have changed so far in so little time. I'm sure it was accurate the first time because I took it two or three times trying to get a improve my score and failing and other people have the same experiences. I'm chaulking my improvement up to several things:

Consciously trying to associate blacks with positivity
Searching and realizing that they images I'm surrounded with are anti-black and pro-white without justification
Living in Chicago versus Greenville
Working at a job with more blacks than whites
Supporting a candidate who is black and partly doing so because he's black

Having taken the race test earlier and done a lot of soul searching regarding it, I'm aware that I am racist against blacks. Or perhaps, now, that I was racist, though I'm reluctant to congratulate myself just yet. For every person you know you form an opinion of them with various dimensions always including a general positive-negative dimension. Don't take this too literally; it's not really so bizarre but I can't think of a more realistic way to phrase the idea. I supposed that subconsciously my bias was bringing every black person I knew down a notch on that dimension and this disturbed me intensely. So I started to consciously and manually move people on that scale up a notch; sometimes this was as blatant as saying to myself, "So and so is probably a little better than I'm give credit for." Jesus would might do this for every person, but I'm going one step at a time.

With most people, this is a brief and tiny process if even conscious but for political candidates up for election every moment with them is constantly re-evaluating my opinion of them. For Obama, I might have twenty reasons to like him and race is one. Well, technically two because I think being non-white is a tangible asset to the office in regards to foreign opinion and the hope to every colored citizen that the Oval Office is not a glass ceiling. I do this, in fact, for McCain too because I'm fairly sure, though with no test, that I harbor a bias against Republicans because of the people I'm around. In fact, he gets two points because it's likely a much stronger bias than race.

I was a little surprised to have only a slight preference toward Obama and not a moderate preference. I simply cannot vote for McCain in good conscience and that, to me, says more than a slight preference.

MPAA Ratings

2008-10-21T13:35:00.003-05:00

I'm quite disappointed to see my blog only earned a PG rating. Clearly, poor algorithms. What good is writing if I can't be controversial?

It reminds me of Mia Vie En Rose, a fantastic film about a transgender seven year old. It was rated R for language, a grand total of two swear words! The trans people I watched it with agreed it could only be because of the issues it raises.

Jonathan Baker-Johnson

2008-10-20T21:11:00.008-05:00

O search engines: Why can't you find me? Maybe this will help.

Update: I had realized that googling my legal name hardly reflects anything about me because I never use that name online. This post is already the first hit now. If only I used Wordpress, I would never have had the problem. Googling ephilei is more effective anyway.

Orthodox Theology and My Theology

2008-10-04T00:42:00.001-05:00

Things I agree with and like about Orthodox that are not present in much or all of Protestantism. Interestingly, with the exception of Mary's virginity, I believed all these things before realizing that the Orthodox believed them. I'm not including anything on worship because I want to limit this to just theology. Worship is much less uniform in Protestantism anyway.

Rejection of the penal substitution theory of the Atonement. I'm still in the process of understanding their view of the Atonement and I love everything I've encountered so far.
Their understanding of symbols as something that is real (or as communicating the real so to speak) versus something only metaphorical.
Transubstantiation. The the Eucharist is the Christ's blood and body. Goes back to symbols.
Baptism as sacrament and remission of sin. Going back to symbols again.
Fasting.
Perpetual virginity of Mary.
Salvation comes through both faith and actions.
Openness to salvation outside the Church.
Authority of tradition.
Understanding of original sin.
Theosis.
Rejection of the perseverance of the saints, total depravity (depending on how you understand it), unconditional election, and irresistible grace
Salvation as process. No point of conversion or justification.
Near ignorance of justification.

Then there are a couple beliefs I don't affirm, but I recognize I may change my stance in the future.

Understanding of the afterlife. That heaven is a place we (may) go to immediately when we die.
The intercession of the saints and Mary. Simply because of the above aspect. If it turns out the saints are conscious now, I would request their prayers.
The canon. I am leaning heavily Orthodox on this at the moment.

And a few things I disagree with and I expect to always disagree with.

Their authority of tradition. Yes, I both like and dislike this.
The degree of the Church's authority.
Gender complementarianism. Yields rejection of female ordination and same-sex marriage. It doesn't demand but does imply a negative stand on transgenderism.

You'll notice I'm far closer to Orthodox thought that Protestant, even if I don't change any more of my beliefs. If I compared Orthodoxy with Roman Catholicism I'd have a similar imbalance.

Back to the Future

2008-08-19T15:15:00.003-05:00

I read this fun magazine from 1979 predicting what the future would be like in 2000. I was impressed that they managed to predict anything correctly, albeit our fish farming doesn't utilize dolphin, the "sheepdog of the sea."

Instant voting of 100 million votes in an hour to determine how a TV show progresses (American Idol)
World population of 6 billion
Most mail will be electronic
Hip replacements
Common satellite TV
Millions of workers telecommuting
A portable device giving directions
TV recording
Genetically engineered crops

Link: http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefuture001.php

Sonia

2008-08-17T12:42:00.001-05:00

This is Sonia. She's resting after earning 50 rupees begging, the safest occupation for trans people in Mumbai.

My Calendar

2008-08-14T19:24:00.002-05:00

Not that I do many scheduled activities or always post them, but here's my calendar. You can bookmark the link: http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=ephilei%40gmail.com&ctz=America/Chicago

Clownfish Deal Blow to Conservatives

2008-07-13T02:58:00.009-05:00

Despite their cute and seemingly innocent exterior, clownfish are dealing a major blow as they reveal themselves as the most perverted of God's, now Satan's, creation. Transexuality, homosexuality, pedophilia - it's the norm in a clownfish household.

Defying both Natural Law and the Word of God, clownfish are seeking and completing sex changes at a staggering rate exceeding 50%. Clownfish, as God's punishment for their perversion, are exclusively born male. Not getting God's genocidal hint, individual males form "harems" of two reproductive and several pre-pubescent fish. The larger of the post-pubescent males changes sex into a female who commits an abomination with ~~her~~ his "partner." Quite a few abominations as "she" lays hundreds or thousands of eggs. If the sex obsessed transexual "female" dies, the father will continue her perverted legacy by having a sex change too. Then, proving that transexuals are pedophiles too, one of the young harem boys "coincidentally" happens to become old enough for sex at the same time the females dies. As these freaks raise their children, the circle of immorality continues.

This raises some questions about Pixar's corruption of America's youth in the blockbuster Finding Nemo.

Nemo's mother was a male to female transexual.
Since Marlin had sex with his "wife," he was gay because he was having sex with someone born male
Marlin is a chaser.
Presumably, Nemo won't become a transexual because his little fin will keep him from growing larger than their clownfish peers. But will likely have sex with one later in lfe.
Marlin is eligible to either find another transexual wife or change sex himself and marrying a husband.

Rumor is the Republican Party is drafting a Constitutional amendment as we speak that will remove the custody of clownchildren to foster homes where they can be adopted by cisgender fish as well as a gag order against worms, snails, and some species of frogs.

10 Ecelectic Facts in My Life

2008-07-02T21:28:00.002-05:00

I'm officially glad summer's here this week but I was disappointed this evening to see the days are already noticeably shorter.

Changing bike tubes make me feel inadequate.

On a Mac you can make a PDF your wallpaper without any steps. It came in handy.

Gonzo is neither male nor female but a "whatever" (as shown in Gonzo's choice of bathrooms) now becoming my favorite muppet behind Statler and Waldorf.

I miss Erin Watson.

The advantage of bad memory is that when you experience old media again after some years, you get all the surprises and fascination you had experiencing it originally.

I now believe Mary is a perpetual virgin. My belief is entirely based on community, tradition, and myth and not at all on Scripture, Creation, or what I grew up and surprisingly little Reason. All of that is evolution.

Autistic people can be fascinating.

Echoing ancient sentiment of their ancestors, Columbia's court made a decision officially declaring that trans people "a source of invaluable social wealth" and "It is our duty, to listen to these people, to learn to live with them and to learn from them." I concur.

I love the old Batman cartoons. I'm looking forward to the new film, but the character of The Joker in the cartoons will be difficult to match.

Integrations

2008-06-19T18:56:00.003-05:00

I've been updating Firefox add-ons that I had to disband during the beta. Of course I'd never remember all the add-ons and Greasemonkey scripts I liked, so a while ago I made a general guide for just this kind of situation. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many things have become unnecessary as Fx has improved: AutoLogin script, change email links to a webmail client, Google suggest, and hiding gmail spam numbers (actually a Gmail improvement), and a Growl-Firefox application. Foxmarks should be replaced by Mozilla Weave eventually and the Activities add-on as the Web evolves to catch up with Firefox's microformats.

I also noticed how many Mac OS X applications I don't need anymore because OS X has created better replacements in the latest version: Chicken of the VNC (for screen sharing), Boot Camp, Monolingual (decreases OS X's footprint), X11 (a Unix framework), Uno (changes window appearances), and a virtual desktop app. The next Quicktime honestly looks like it may decrease my reliance on all the media codecs I have, support for more compression formats, and exposure to their hibernation support which Apple hides for some reason.

Firefox 3.0

2008-06-17T15:57:00.005-05:00

Firefox 3 is out today. I had been back doing betas again and did bug reporting for the first time which was fun. One of my bugs never got fixed which made me feel weirdly upset. Upsettingly upset, actually. Beyond perfectionism, it really is glorious. Faster, safer, more stable, and a few goodies.

So go download it.

It's the Platform, Stupid

2008-06-07T03:33:00.002-05:00

In response to Cringley's article about keeping the economy platform of cheap fuel but replacing the current oil with another bio fuel not unlike ethanol. And also in response to the comments of people who said, basically, "yeah, that or this other fuel I hear is going to solve our problems."

Everyone (here, governments, the public, media) is making a huge assumption that there is a fuel replacement for oil. The assumption isn't based on energy research, it based on fear. Oil is a huge part of our life and losing oil (or an identically functioning equivalent) would literally crash both our economy and way of life. And it's the fear of that happening that prevents humans from realizing the obvious: we're screwed.

Platform is right. But the platform is cheap fuel. The platform is American wealth. It's being able to eat whatever whenever because we can ship it across the country or across continents. It's being able to fly or drive to see your family every thanksgiving. It's cheap products. It's houses with more rooms than people. It's being able to use your individualized car instead of public transport with strangers. It's getting to commute even a half hour which let's you have the job you want while living where you want. It's always living in a building between 60 and 80 degrees. It's be able to buy twice much food as we need, and of considerably higher quality, and throwing a third away because we don't feel like eating leftovers or eating on a schedule to avoid spoilage. Rider mowers and weed wackers instead of push mowers and rakes. All these things we take for granted. Compare this to the world or to history and you'll realize the platform of the 20th century was wealth fueled by oil.

The few people, mostly environmentalists, who were able to see past this knew this oil problem was coming. Call it Peak Oil or just the common sense that every non-renewable resource must run out. Yet all our expert economicists are acting as if huge oil cost rises are surprising. This is were it's better to be open-minded than to be an expert.

Every couple years there's a new so-called replacement for oil. They all sound too good to be true, so forgive me for not believing them. Take ethanol. Just a couple years ago everything was yahooing about how it would solve our problems (much of the public still thinks this) yet it was obvious from the start this was impossible. Yet those platform defenders needed a rescue idea and ethanol was the best they had. Now the rescue-fuel is SwiftFuel but it's super obvious that even at 5 or 6 times higher efficiency than ethanol, it's not nearly enough. We'd need something near 100 times greater efficency.

We're not actually cutting back on oil usage, we're cutting back on usage growth. We've been growing so constantly in the past 6 decades it's hard to see the difference. Even if we get to neutral growth, oil prices will rocket and we're screwed.

So to burst bubbles, but there's only one way this can end. Our platform will die. Americans will do what we hate most: sacrifice. It's not even needing to choose to change our lifestyle, we'll be forced to change, kicking screaming all the way out the door, no doubt. But few will believe this - so blinded by the platform are we. Those who couldn't see the demise of oil until it was too late won't see the demise of the "American way" as Bush articulated in response to energy cutbacks. The best anyone can do know is prepare themselves for the fall.

Fox's Subliminal Message

2008-05-12T10:56:00.002-05:00

Not that I need any more proof of Fox's bias, but I find it amusing.

Why My Former Pastor's Family Is Great

2008-05-08T23:03:00.002-05:00

After getting fired, they volunteered to help find a replacement
They color coordinate cups to save water
One is writing a book
Their cat loves me (and everyone)
They sing and dance even if they don't know the song
They have a wood burning stove
They all love hugging
They're humble
We separated for 18 years and randomly met later
They have a car that runs on used veggie oil

Myth defined

2008-05-06T22:40:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I write a long email and feel bad that I've put so much energy into writing something for one person. So I thought I'd paste it here for a couple others to profit:

The semantics of "myth" greatly depend on whom you ask. And depending on how it's define, I'm either greatly interested or totally apathetic. The layman meaning of course is something like "a widely believed but false idea." Your assumed meaning is less common, but well still widely accepted. When Bultmann talks about myth, he's referring to something like what you described. Now my view of language is that a word doesn't have some absolute meaning that is objective. What's important is to be aware of the ascribed definition and the definition you ascribe yourself. All that to say I don't think my own definition is more correct than Bultmann's or Jane Doe's, but I recognize it's different and there's simply no other word for this meaning.

I've tried to keep my definition of myth close to that of authors, especially Joseph Campbell, if only so we can talk about the same concept. Namely, "a story seeking to communicate profound truth." However, the definition, like any particular myth, is better communicated as a story rather than plain discussion. In all my reading, I have yet to find any respectable author give a definition of myth. So I guess that means I'm not respectable! Historicity is definitely irrelevant. Myths typically succeed in communicating truth, but not always; racism, for instance, utilizes myth. This idea is consistent with the definition of such Christian writers who value myth like Mircea Eliade, Tolkien, Andrew Greely, and CS Lewis.

Historicity has no offect on myths. Historicity does not increase or decrease either the effectiveness or truth of a myth. Eg, The Prodigal Son is a myth and would be exactly the same whether or not an actual a son was eating from a pig's trough.

Because the definition of myth is both controversial and nuanced, it's hard for me to gauge Smith's idea without context. I will say that in my definition of myth, myth is not grounded on reason and has nothing to do with science whatsoever. Myth is thoroughly subjective. Eg, one myth (which spans all three definitions) is that in evolution, man evolved from monkeys. No evolutionary scientist would say that - they'd say we evolved from a predecessor of apes but the myth persists strongly because of its subjective strengths.

So that's what happens when you bring up myth with me. : )

The Emperor's New Gender-Clothes

2008-05-05T12:41:00.004-05:00

I read an interesting analogy of how trans people trying to pass are like the delusional Emperor walking around naked expecting everyone to follow his delusion. That's a faulty but very interesting comparison.

The essence of this myth is that people will believe anything to avoid the shame of their peers. If you're noble, you'll see the clothes. Or, if you're tolerant, you'll see my sex. The problem with the original comparison is the classic confusion between sex and gender. The only people showing off their sex is your lover, nudists, and the occasional female celeb craving attention. The gender analogy should be, if you're a man or a woman, you'll see my sex.

Combining sex and gender, the gender-trickster, tells us to dress up in the sex (female or male, vagina or penis) it has prepared for us. Hike up your dress, prop up your breasts, attach some earings so that everyone can appreciate your beautiful vagina. Put on your suit, your loafers, cut your hair short, and don't forget your phallic tie; everyone will see your penis. Our common sense might say, "If I wear clothes, how will people see through to my sex?" "No," the trickster says, "your clothes, your gender, that is your sex. Everyone knows that. Well, every woman and every man knows that. You are a real woman or man!?" "Of course!" We reply and tremble at having our sex challenged for only a moment and that's the last we hear of our common sense.

Then we got waltz around in our in gender-clothes acting as if all the while we are showing off our genitals to the world. "Do you like my shoes? Aren't they feminine? I mean, vulva-like?" And not only does no one say anything, they join the march of our delusion. "Yes! The heel looks just like a clitoris!" For we are all emperors desperately afraid of losing the majesty bestowed by each other that hangs by the thread of our gender-clothes. Nobody gets anywhere in this world without a gender. So we pretend gender doesn't matter, it's invisible, it's equivalent to our sex.

Children have the advantage of innocence and ignorance from trickster and they can see what everyone else is afraid of seeing. When a girl hates to wear dresses or a boy loves pink it's because they haven't learned the important of gender-clothes yet. Their disadvantage is that adults don't believe them. Here's the kicker; what Hans Christian Anderson had the guts to say but we often don't tell our children: the Emperor always keeps walking and the trickster isn't punished. I've seen it occasionally when a child like myself is able to break someone out of their gender for a moment; but the pressure of a thousand emperors is too great and they always jump back into the parade.

So whenever you see someone walking around with the standard gender-defender uniform, especially the wannabe women swinging their hips and propping their bosoms and the wannabe men spreading their legs wide to invite your gaze to their crotch, realize they're nudists hoping their gender-clothes are invisible to you.

Misc

2008-05-05T10:18:00.003-05:00

Wonderful element of Orthodox Paschal liturgy: "He has trampled death by death and to those in the tombs is granting life." I had this imagery of an icon of the earth sliced, with Hades below and the surface above. Jesus is sowing vines in Hades which grow up and sprout in Golgotha above.

Christians' favorite pharoah, Akhenaten, was trans.

I won Solitaire on a Windows 95 computer yesterday and it was awesome. The program hasn't changed in a decade, yet the original is somehow clearly superior.

Kate Bornstein: "Transphobia and misogyny are not related. They are the same."

Racist America

2008-05-01T17:29:00.004-05:00

Obama doesn't speak in ebonics. He's not poor. Affirmative action didn't make him a bestselling author. He didn't grown up in a fatherless home nor do his own kids; he's not athletic, at least if his bowling is typical; he's neither tall, muscled, and intimdating or fat, whimsicle, and cheery; he didn't grown up in an urban ghetto or the Confederate South, isn't obsessed with violence, watermelon, chicken, hot sauce, hiphop, basketball, jazz, blues, yelling, religion, alchohol, crack, bling, or Nike. He's not even a whitified black man with khakis and dreads. I don't know a single black thing about him.

Racism isn't gone in America, it's just silent and ignored. When a sin goes silent and ignored, it doesn't heal like whites want to believe, it only festers and manifests itself quietly. The racial status quo in America is something like this: blacks and white are equal, integration is good but should come slowly, and no one should talk about any of this. Like all things, the status quo was set by those in power: Whites.

At first, Obama only violated the status quo by integrating too quickly. One or two hundred years from now and when 25% or so congress members are black and then a black president would be ok. Now the media got riled about this, as well as Clinton's vagina, but there wasn't anything to say except marvel at his melanin. Everyone had their hands tied because Obama escaped the negative (and positive) stereotypes so their was nothing rational to say. Yet on NPR, a listener called in to say he couldn't explain it, but he just would not vote for a black person. But most people like that at least quarantine themselves in their beloved silence. I wonder how many people sit in that prison. Yet Obama is still dangerous. Societies tend to see their societal system as pivotal to survival and when a group threatens their very survival, everything else, even common sense, becomes impractical. But Obama wouldn't bring mass hysteria if he didn't upset the status quo and thus avoid racism.

Jeremiah Wright, however, felt no need to tiptoe. That is his sin. Wright believes, as I do, that anyone who supports America's racial status quo of segregation or silence is racist. Wright has put a knife to the neck of those people simply by speaking. His yelling helps.

So this is Obama's one black stereotype: his pastor.

Wright, like Martin Luther King, refuses to play the stealth game. Racism doesn't go away just because one generation stops talking or because a few laws change. Racism will never die until Whites, and Blacks, stop profitting from it. Until fast food, janitors, thug hiphop, and soldiers stop becoming the vocation of Blacks and Whites get out of the dirty work, racism won't die. And that won't happen until, possibly, several centuries of ignorance go by or we until start dialoguing. But likewise, until brimstone sermons about God and America stop securing Wright's parish, racism still won't die.

The media wants to say it's about God punishing America. They're lying. They're probably lying to themselves. That's the shell; the meat is "Blacks, with God's blessing, will punish White America for their sin." And that's true. Its truth is why it scares the shit of out of Whites. When Harold Washington, the first white mayor of a racist Chicago, took office and he made Chicago government "Fairer than Fair." "Fair" is great for Blacks, but Whites are spoiled with better treatment. More importantly, Whites will have to face their continuing, silent racism. They'll have to face their ignorance. People are proven happier when they're around people worse off than themselves which is where Whites have lived in this country. Being equal is a political word for average, and we hate feeling average.

Lots of Christians preach about God punishing their own nation for its sins. 9/11, Katrina, floods, fires, and anything you could think of. It's downright Biblical! Every prophet, Jesus included, condemned Israel and expected God's wrath. And every one of those preachers endorsed Bush. And every media network saw no problem there. John Hagee, with more layers of hell than Dante, and McCain love each other and McCain be damned if Herald of Doom Pat Robertson doesn't support him by November. Maybe the media is too conservative and maybe they're puppets, but that's not why ignore the White prophets and condemn the Black. The media is racist. Religious hatred is only newsworthy when you can attach it to someone you hate, like terrorists, the KKK, or blacks. The media keeps saying that Americans are being prompted by race in this election and they're right. I am appalled that this is the way the dialogue begins.

Most people reading this are white as am I. They're also wealthy, heterosexual, and the women are in a generation blessed by feminism and post-feminism. It's not "fair," but most don't get it. And while my not-straightness helps me, I struggle with racism as well and that's why I talk about it.

Update: Apparently someone at the New York Times agrees, if only more politically correct.

Plastic Bags

2008-04-29T12:00:00.003-05:00

When I bought some scruptious Judos del Valle yesterday I asked not to receive a bag, as always. The clerk pretended not to hear me and I didn't want to make a big deal out of it.

China is banning plastic bags starting June 1 this year. Sometimes they really know what they're doing. Kudos to Uganda and Ireland as well.

Self image

2008-04-28T20:10:00.003-05:00

I would love to look like this woman, Antony Hegarty.

When God Meets Hades

2008-04-27T02:16:00.001-05:00

I'm very interested in the concept of the Coincidence of Opposites - it is the the peculiar act when two things which are diametrically opposed in their essence enter into a singularity. I love discovering it in modern mythology - Gandalf surrenders his fate to the demonic balrog; Obi Wan Kenobi to Darth Vador; Neo to Agent Smith. In Christianity the prime incident of this is Jesus laying down his life on The Skull - the Creator of Life is consumed by Death.

Suffice it say, at that point the Opposites change each other fundamentally.

There is second, at least, Coincidence of Opposites in Christianity that I hadn't realized until today - in Revelation 20 where God meets with Death and Hades. The details are sparse: the dead souls are vomited back into consciousness and "Death and Hades is placed in the fiery presence of God, in the "lake of divine fire", it is destroyed, because it is in the very presence of God, death can not exist when God is present." (This blog inspired by this article, btw.)

This leads me to an obvious question: At the Coincidence of Opposites, the True One undergoes a sacrifice and in their resurrection they undergo a great transformation: Gandalf the Grey becomes Gandalf the White; Obi Wan becomes "more powerful than you can possibly imagine," Neo gains mental powers, and Jesus appends the Divine Female and can walk through walls. So when God adjoins with Death and Hades, what is the sacrifice? Will God, the entire Godhead, die? As heretical as it sounds, it seems the only possibility. And what is the transformation? The thought awes and titillates me.

I don't know how (or even "if," really) God's own self would transform, but I think it must have something to do with the transformation of all Creation occurring around the same point: fire and mountains falling from the sky, the earth rumbling, the seas exploding, the earth burning - sounds fitting for the Death of God. I wonder if God will bring us into that death as well. I don't know from which side we'll enter, though. Will we, as dead people, enter with Death and Hades consuming God or next to God and consumed by Death. Or some of both; the dead or sinners with Death and the still living or saints with God. I am befuddled that in myth, the True/Good/Hero/Light/Righteous One does not consume their Opposite but allows their violent Opposite to consume them. It's unanimous. But here, Death and Hades are the passive party.

The transformation, apart from whatever happens to God, I can only guess means for the rest of us the final and full sanctification. I've always wondered at the teaching that we humans die and then become perfect so simply and so easily. Of course Scripture, our Experience, and Revelation are all silent so there's little to know, but I don't assume the silence means there's nothing to bother talking about. I'm confident it must be agonizingly difficult, painful, messy, and just complicated because that's how Christianity is; that's how the Cross is. And beautiful. There is this assumption that at the Apocalypse God will throw off pretenses of peace and powerlessness and slaughter everyone God doesn't like without restraint like a schizophrenic. This was not God's method before, during, or after the Incarnation and I find it inexplicably out of character. God has always used Power Under in place of Power Over and I see no reason God would change except for the lack of imagination of some bloodthirsty Christians.

The birth of the New Earth and New Heaven come, too. I never thought of if this before either, but if Heaven must be resurrected, and Heaven is synonymous with God, then this implies God has died and resurrected as well.

On the other hand, I write all in this in the utmost humility knowing that I don't understand a lick of Revelation. Nevertheless, I fully expect if anyone reads this to be burned at some stake.

Wesleyan Quadrilateral

2008-04-26T21:35:00.003-05:00

I was asked to describe my thoughts on the insufficiency of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral which simply says that a Christian's authority of truth is four sided: Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason with Scripture the largest of the sides. It's not a bad model, per se, but it's drastically oversimplified to the point of being unhelpful. It is only two dimensional, after all. I appreciate Matt Zahniser's pentilaterial which appends Creation as a fifth side. Even so, these "sides" are misleading because they don't merely connect at their ends as the following prototypical quadrilateral implies:

In reality, all four (or five) are a huge jumble of intersections and overlaps. I think the following Venn diagram (in no particular order) is a little more telling:

This is oversimplified too, but it's a start. Allow me to dissect the elements one by one. Experience This is perhaps the only element that can exist independently. (I say can, not should.) A person outside the Bible or Qur'an probably lives without scripture. If they live in the West, the probably live without Tradition. If they're an idiot, they live without Reason as well. Nevertheless, they're religious beliefs are always influenced by Experience. Experience is ubiquitous and influences every facet of our life. Everything you believe, think, feel, or do is influenced by your individual, previous experience. If a person has experience, even just a little, with seeing, for example, mercy, their beliefs will include mercy. If they have no experience of, say, discipline, their beliefs will not include discipline unless influenced by the other elements. Reason Nearly everyone will let their Reason influence them as well. (At least this is true in my post-Enlightenment experience; like everyone, I cannot live outside my own experience.) I use my Reason to determine that God acts in history, but only because I have experienced God acting in history. Usually I encounter an experience, filter it through my Reason, and then say "that experience is an authority for me." This happens in reverse as well: Experience acts as an authority for or against our Reason. I may use my reason to think war is allowable, but the amount of authority I give that belief will change once I experience war or the belief may change altogether. Tradition Here's where things get interesting. Tradition could also be called Communal Experience and/or Communal Reason. The purpose of Tradition is pass down the Experience and Thoughts from one person to another and one generation to the next. This means Tradition creates Experience in the soul of the next person. "What does God feel like?" "How do I pray?" These are answered by Tradition. Tradition doesn't create Reason, but it does demonstrate Reason. "How do I understand the Trinity?" "What is the paradigm for divine justice?" Tradition can demonstrate how to use Reason to approach these thoughts. And again, all this work in reverse. Tradition doesn't come from thin air; it is born from both Experience and Reason. "How do we communicate God's smell?" "What is our Communal Reason regarding the Trinity?" Experience is the raw material and Reason is the mold from which we convert Experience to Tradition. It might go like this: We reason that God is holy and we experience holiness by music. Therefore, let's include music into our Tradition. A person comes to a church, experiences music, and reasons that God is holy. Scripture This is actually very simple when you realize that Scripture (to the horror of Protestants!) is simply written Tradition. Like everyone who makes Tradition, they use their Experience of God or Reason about God as a catalyst and then their Reason both as a filter and as a toolset. And like all Tradition, the community of believers must take the proposed Tradition and approve or reject it. Does it fit their Experience and their Reason? If so, it is canonized and passed on to become the Tradition of the catholic Church. When we hear the Scripture, we hear it within our entire Experience; when I hear "God is holy" I have a previous experience of who God is, what "holy" means and even what "is" is. Then we fit it together using our Reason. Now I think there's one major element missing from this model. Revelation Revelation is a kind of Experience - the experience of God. This should really be first and I think warrants separation from all other experiences. Without Revelation, authority is only human. I include Zahniser's Creation as a form of Revelation. Besides Creation and those burning bush revelations, there is the revelation of the Holy Spirit who potentially through all Experience - Rick's "miracles ordinary proportion," the wisdom of Community, the inspiration of Scripture, and things like that.

gcee-shirts

2008-04-16T21:15:00.003-05:00

I was thinking of bring a Greenville shirt or two to wear while I was down last weekend. Kyle told me he had one. I have

4 Agape volunteer tees
2 All College Hike tees
1 Walkabout shirt
2 dorm tees

Incidentally, neither of the dorm shirts were for the places I lived, I didn't go on Walkabout, and one Agape shirt wasn't originally mine. Tonight I made some progress and threw out that Agape shirt so I'm down to only 8.

Traveling preparation

2008-04-07T23:55:00.008-05:00

I started getting ready for traveling to Greenville tonight. Even my plannings must be queer. It first consisted of caching maps in Google Earth. You just never know whether or not you'll need some satellite imagery. Only later did I think to look up directions. I started picking out clothes, but that got confusing. I've felt like a boy today, which was confusing enough, so I kind of loss my sense of what I'll want to wear. I hope that doesn't last long - I only have a couple days in Greenville and if I was a boy the whole time I'll feel I'm not making the most of it.

Then I thought, 'I need some traveling music.' I remembered most of my GC collection had been lost in the great rm -R * disaster of senior year with just Augustana, For All the Drifters, and BDA. I was honestly surprised I haven't rm -Red BDA on purpose, but I was actually grateful to see it. Big cheers to Angelface, Nova Child, and especially Pedalboy for putting their music online and big jeers to Blackboard Records for not even having a website at all. I've reached 525 MB which is far more than I hoped. So then I started gushing seeing old pictures of Katelin, Luke and other old friends. I'm stoked to see Katelin.

Then I found some stuff on a ... err, other ... err, person. While I always feel queer, seeing my own queerness in the face of someone else is another sensation entirely. Like being your own subject. I never figured out if gushing about my namesake was appropriate or not. Actually I think I did, but it's been so long I forgot. Actually I didn't forget, I'm just being conservative. I think I'm too conservative with relationships. I'd certainly be less nervous about this trip if I wasn't so. Part of my conservatism is a hestitancy to be too queer in front of others. Goodnight,

2008-03-31T11:22:00.003-05:00

Every good Lewis mention deserves some Tolkien, too. In my wonderful Sunday School yesterday Father Pat taught, in part, about the dream of Pilot's wife. There's a remarkable likeness of her dream with the dream of the Magi. Both occur concerning Jesus at the end points of his life and both try to save Jesus from deaths plotted by the Jewish leaders. What's most interesting is they both spring from the minds of Gentiles - polytheistic, heathen, "unsaved" Gentiles.

These Gentile, Christ, dreams were crucial to JRR Tolkien's understanding of the nature of God, Jesus, salvation, and his fiction. Dreams are just another kind of form of myth, like a sonnet to poetry. Tolkien saw Jesus scattered all other European mythologies; they were God's whisperings to peoples who had never heard God out loud. Matthew acknowledges this twice in his gospel. The Gentiles recognize the Messiah as a king and a just man and a strong desire to stand up against the political forces to preserve Jesus' life. Their beliefs aren't comprehensive creeds, but they are faith and that's enough. Likewise, the Greenman and Odin don't match up with Christian theology at every detail, but for those who latch on with faith and act, the myths are enough.

2008-03-31T10:48:00.002-05:00

So good that I had to re-post it, stolen shamelessly from Paradoxy. To anyone who thinks America should use ~~Scripture~~ Protestant tradition as its moral compass, this will sound downright blasphemous. Until you read see the author.

"I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber barron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated." -C.S. Lewis, A Reply to Professor Haldane

I think it fascinating the Evangelicals have all but canonized Lewis while ignoring his beliefs like this. Or gay marriage. Or teaching evolution. Or the salvation of non-Christians.

Gender semantics

2008-03-28T14:33:00.002-05:00

It's not often that a trans-condemning author writes something worthwhile on the topic, so I want to give credit for really trying, even tho we ultimately disagree: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=18-10-036-f

The bulk of Young's article is a examination of the etymology of "homosexual," "heterosexual," "sex," and "gender" which is beautifully done! It's fascinating that it lays the basis both for my affirmative thoughts about gender (and sexual orientation) and Young's condemnation. If everyone was familiar with this history I think we'd have much better dialogues. We can't talk constructively about conclusions until all parties have a common set of data. Kudos to Young.

I don't want to get lost in a tirade on where I disagree with Young. I'd rather be encouraged by his good scholarship. So I'll be brief to say that we differ because Young allows linguistics to be both descriptive and prescriptive for understanding, as if dictionaries should replace universities. And not just any dictionary, but only the very old. Every definition younger than at least 140 years he dismisses and every definition older he accepts point blank. He demands that Christians stop using the words "homosexual" and "heterosexual" and use "sex" and "gender" interchangeably. This would not be so bad if he gave us alternative vocabulary. He does not and it's easy to see that a vacuum of vocabulary will feed the vacuum of dialogue between LGBTA Christians and others.

For example, just as the First Testament equates sex with gender, so does it equate Heaven with the heavens. That was all well and good for them on both counts. Even if a astronaut-feminist came and split their vocabulary, I'm sure they'd just remain as synonyms in all usage. But we live in a different age and our languages need to advance alongside our psychology and astronomy. It's now quite significant to understand that Jesus doesn't live on Mars and every person with a vagina need not use excessive qualifiers.

Many of my conversations get no where because people don't understand the difference in sex and gender, or at least the feminist understanding. It's quite fine for those people to believe they are synonymous but if those same people are incapable of understanding a different set of definitions, they can't understand what I say and feel and, well, we simply cannot dialogue. I might as well speak Norwegian. Young is quite right that words change the discussion and someone who doesn't differentiate between sex and gender will never accept my sexuality. My criticism is that neither will they ever deny my sexuality. They will simply be incapable of comprehending it; they would live in an ideological isolation. The astronaut could never explain to the ancient Hebrew that while she comes from the heavens and God resides in Heaven, she's not an angel. Gender gives sex another dimension, from a flat earth to an astronomical cosmos - a dimension whose possibility Young and others are ~~unable~~ unwilling to acknowledge.

Genders in marriage

2008-03-25T12:43:00.002-05:00

I read a great article on sex and gender as ingredients for marriage: http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2008/03/25/1692

Included is some ways, historically, that trans people marry. One of the points is that marriage has traditionally relied on having different genders, not different sexes. Since my gender is different than everyone I've met, this feels like good news to me! As well as the note some marriages don't involve any sexual activity.

Blog of Facebook

2008-03-21T15:43:00.001-05:00

My blog is now fed into Facebook, so you can read the same stuff there and I don't have to copy and paste everything. Nice feature.

My opinion of anti-gays

2008-03-21T15:27:00.004-05:00

At best, ex-gay advocates are ignorant - people like my family and some friends who don't know anything about homosexuality, but they know it's bad. Those same people who start climbing the ladder of information will either stop encouraging ex-gay ministries or will filter out what they don't like and/or twist the information to conform to their previous ideas that were based on ignorance. Psychologists on the whole cringe at every claim the ex-gay ministries make. Just let them read from NARTH or the Jones-Yarhouse study. In my mind, they qualify as bigots.

Then there are the scribes and Pharisees - they only accept the science that doesn't contradict their theology. "We don't change our beliefs just because science disagrees with them," one said. Theology is very subjective, so I give them more credit than the bigoted "scientists." Their problem, like those who are innocently ignorant, is intellectual and not discriminatory or at least I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. However, they need to learn to reconcile science with religion for the conversation to move from opinion to testable facts and simply to become a full citizen of the 21st century.

Oh, and all this applies to those not affirming transgenderedness. Still waiting for Jerry Leach.

Another ChristToday mistake

2008-02-22T13:33:00.003-06:00

A missed an erroneous in the Christianity today article.

"There are six levels of GID according to what is known as the Harry Benjamin Scale. The occasional cross-dresser is stage one; someone who has had a surgical procedure, such as a vaginectomy or penectomy, has completed the final step."

There's a great difference between a "level" and a "step" or "stage" and I believe Benjamin uses the terminology "type." Christianity Today makes it sound as if there is a chronology present, as if cross dressors can evolve into transexuals. However, the Benjamin scales addresses types of people, not stages of their transition from one sex or gender to another. To my knowledge, there is very little true movement between trans types, Ben. Scale types or otherwise. There are fluxuations, just as with cisgender people. And some trans people change identities entirely, but always because of further introspection. For instance, I didn't id as intergendered and until I was internally motivated to sit down and figure out of my funny feelings.

Second mistake. The sixth (and fifth) type requires a request for a penectomy but doesn't neceessarily happen. The Benjamin Scale was created using almost only biologically male participants, thus it says nothing about FtM surgery. Neither does CT reflect the real world. Many trans people finish transitioning without any surgery or without a vaginectomy or penectomy.

Trans behavior in animals

2008-02-20T10:58:00.003-06:00

So my posting frenzy continues. Here's an amazing summary of trans behavior in animals including homosexuality, bisexuality, asexual reproduction, transexuality, hermaphrotism (that is, two full sets of sex organs), and other kinds of intersexuality.

It got me thinking that perhaps some homosexual behavior in animals is really transexual behavior. Does an animal what its own sex? How? My weak zoological understanding is the reason animals smell each others genitals is to determine what sex it is and if it's thus available for mating; animals recognize each other almost entirely based on smell and little on sight. If they use smell to recognize genitals, then how do they recognize their own genitals? Perhaps their own genitals have the smell of the opposite sex so their same-sex partners appear to them as opposite sex. Or, perhaps they don't perceive their own smell at all (my experience washing cats suggests this) and their brain simply identifies as their opposite sex.

Favorite quote: "Those who attempt to limit nature, limit God."

A Third Sex Around the World
...

Just as there are many incredible displays of sex and gender variety among Hindu deities, so also nature displays an amazing array of sex and gender diversity within the animal kingdom. The simplistic notion of a Noah’s Ark, with one male and one female specimen sustaining all species, is a far cry from scientific reality. In truth, biological sustenance and reproduction are dependent upon an incredibly complex web of co-dependent factors, including a third sex. Not only is nature more complex than we imagine, it is more complex than we can imagine!

Microbes and simple life forms are, of course, either asexual or hermaphrodite, meaning they reproduce without separate dimorphic divisions of male and female. Many plants can reproduce themselves simply by the severance of a root, twig, or other appendage, and nearly all flowering plants are hermaphrodite with sexual organs (flowers) that have both male and female parts. Worms, slugs and many aquatic species are also hermaphrodite—they possess both eggs and sperm that are mutually exchanged. In the insect world, reproduction occurs mainly through dimorphic male and female methods, yet many of the more developed social species such as bees, ants and termites sustain their colonies through large numbers of asexual or sterile workers. In such insect colonies, the asexual workers and reproductive queens and drones are all co-dependent upon one another for survival.

Scientific studies of homosexual behavior among fruit flies are quite well known; scientists have observed this behavior in nature and can also induce it in individuals through the manipulation of their genes. Homosexual behavior has similarly been observed in insects such as moths, butterflies and beetles, and intersexed examples of butterflies and spiders have been found that are sexually divided in half, with one side male and one side female (gynandromorphism). Among the millions of Monarch Butterflies found mating in central Mexico, 10 percent of the mating pairs are same-sex male couples—with an even higher ratio of 50 percent by the end of the season!

Creatures such as sow bugs, shrimp and oysters completely reverse their sex at some stage in their lives and such transsexuality is a routine occurrence for many species. Tropical coral fish, for instance, are especially well known for their ability to change sex—more than 50 species of parrotfish, groupers, angelfish and others are all transsexual. Their reproductive organs can undergo a complete reversal, enabling females with fully functioning ovaries to become males with fully functioning testes and vice versa. In some families of fish, transsexuality is so common that it’s actually more unusual to find species that do not change sex!

Among amphibians and reptiles, certain species are known to reproduce both sexually and asexually. Female geckos, salamanders and Whiptail Lizards, for example, are parthenogenetic (able to clone themselves) and can reproduce without help from males. Biologists have identified over a thousand of such parthenogenetic species worldwide. Among snakes, both homosexual and bisexual behavior has been observed and studied. Most animals attract and find partners primarily through pheromone or scent signals and when snakes or other animals are homosexually attracted they are simply following these natural signals. In some species such as Garter Snakes, certain males will produce the female pheromone, thus adding to the complexity!

In birds and mammals, methods of reproduction are consistently dimorphic but social interaction and behaviors such as courting, mating and nesting become increasingly diverse. It is among these species, therefore, that the greatest amount of homosexual, bisexual and transgender behavior is found. Homosexuality among avian species is quite common and has been observed in nearly all bird families including waterfowl, sea birds, penguins, parrots, songbirds, finches, swallows, sparrows, crows, hummingbirds, woodpeckers, game birds, birds of prey, flightless birds and so on. Birds are similar to humans in the sense that they typically mate and nest in pairs. Thus, homosexual birds also court each other, pair off, mate and build nests together. Quite a few also become involved in raising chicks—penguins, swans, flamingos, parrots, songbirds, gulls and others have all been observed taking eggs or finding hatchlings to rear as their own. Some birds also engage in same-sex group behavior. In Mallard Ducks, for instance, where homosexuality and bisexuality are quite common, “gay” drakes socialize primarily among themselves and form what biologists refer to as “clubs.” Other birds are transgender—certain female Hooded Warblers can be found bearing the markings and singing voices of males while in other species, such as Ochre-bellied Flycatchers, certain males will mimic the courting behavior of female birds to attract other males. Such types of transgender birds (with mixed gender markings and behavior) are commonly observed by ornithologists and referred to as “marginal” males or females. Intersex conditions are also found among avian species and over forty cases of gynandromorphism, wherein birds have split male and female plumage, have been reported in species such as pheasants, falcons, and finch. In some types of birds, significant portions of the population never mate or reproduce; for instance, twenty-five percent of Long-tailed Hermit Hummingbirds remain single and nonreproductive throughout their lives, and as much as one third of Common Murres (a seabird) and Kestrels (a type of falcon) do the same.

Among mammal species, homosexual, bisexual and transgender behavior is even more common and has been documented among small rodents and insectivores (mice, rats, bats, squirrels, chipmunks, marmots, hedgehogs, etc.); marsupials (wallabies, kangaroo, koalas, dunnarts, etc.); carnivores (lions, cheetahs, wolves, foxes, bears, hyenas, mongooses, martens, raccoons, etc.); hoofed mammals (deer, elk, caribou, moose, giraffes, antelopes, gazelles, pronghorns, wild sheep, goats, buffalo, bison, musk-oxen, zebra, horses, pigs, llamas, elephants, rhinoceros, etc.), marine mammals (river and salt-water dolphins, porpoises, Orcas, whales, seals, sea lions, walruses, manatees, dugongs, etc.) and primates (Bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, Orangutans, gibbons, langurs, Proboscis Monkeys, macaques, baboons, Squirrel Monkeys, capuchins, tamarins, langurs, bushbabies, etc.).

Homosexuality in mammals is quite complex and has been well studied both in captivity and in the wild. Bonobos (Pygmy Chimpanzees), for example, have been found to exhibit a wide variety of different homosexual behaviors and emotions, and in small mammals such as mice and rats, scientists can induce homosexual behavior through the manipulation of their hormones during gestation. Bisexuality is very common among mammals and has been observed in many species outside of their normal breeding season such as Walruses, Bottlenose Dolphins, Bison, Bighorn Sheep, Giraffes, etc. Transgender behavior can also be observed among mammals—in Bighorn Sheep, some rams identify as female and herd themselves with the ewes. While Bighorn rams typically engage in homosexual behavior all year long, the transgender rams will only allow themselves to be mounted during the mating season when the “other” ewes are in estrus!

Many varieties of intersex conditions are found in mammals such as primates, bears, whales, dolphins, marsupials, rodents, insectivores and others, and quite a few mammal species have large numbers of individuals that are nonreproductive and never breed. For instance, more than fifty percent of American Bison and Right Whales, 75 percent of Blackbucks and Giraffes, and 80-95 percent of New Zealand Sea Lions and Northern Elephant Seals never mate or reproduce with the opposite sex throughout their entire lives.

Ratios of heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual animals vary from species to species and in many cases the homosexual populations of animals exceed those found in humans. Human populations are roughly estimated to be 80 percent heterosexual, 15 percent bisexual and 5 percent homosexual (80-15-5), but among animals these ratios can differ considerably. Female Silver Gulls, for example, have been found to have a ratio of 79-11-10, respectively, while male Black-headed Gulls have a ratio of 63-15-22 and Galahs (a type of cockatoo), 44-11-44.

There are so many examples of gender-variant creatures in the animal kingdom that it is impossible to do them justice here. Why such creatures exist or what purpose they serve may be debatable or even beyond our understanding, but clearly the natural world, when put under the microscope, is amazingly diverse. Biological life is so exuberant it seems to diversify at every possible opportunity and in every conceivable way, thus reflecting the very nature of Godhead itself.

Those who attempt to limit nature, limit God. In scientific journals from the nineteenth century, early zoologists typically imposed their own homophobia on the animal kingdom. While praising the mating of heterosexual creatures as “beautiful representations of God’s glory,” they simultaneously condemned the homosexual behavior they witnessed among animals as “unnatural” and “so monstrous as to be unworthy of record.” Initially, many zoologists tried to explain away homosexuality in the animal kingdom, hypothesizing that the creatures were simply deprived of opposite sex partners, mimicking heterosexual behavior, reacting to artificial environments, defective in some way, confused, or so on. All such rationalizations, however, have since been disproved and unbiased research into the animal kingdom has disclosed to modern biologists what indigenous cultures of the world have known all along—that nature is awe-inspiring and inconceivably variegated in terms of sex and gender.

Edit: The source is http://www.galva108.org/aroundtheworld.html

Trans reparative therapy

2008-02-20T10:41:00.002-06:00

I found this lengthy article that responds critically to the work of Jerry Leach. I'm not well versed enough in psychology to vouch for it's accuracy, but it appears good. A lot of similarities with ex-gay reparative therapy, of course.

More on ChristToday

2008-02-20T09:07:00.006-06:00

In the previous post, I nitpicked all the errors and misleading language used in a Christianity Article today article on transexuals. I didn't recognize there was an accompanying mini-article written by the same author. You read this article online as well.

This one is much better; no need for a long list of my corrections. I think if the article was more than half a page with fewer outside quotes and stories Kennedy would have made just as many mistakes. But he didn't, so I'm happy.

This article does upset me greatly in its attitude of the relationship between the Church and trans people.

Cumings and the elders wrestled at length with many questions: Is it right to reject an isolated, deeply troubled person who is seeking the Lord? Is it wise to allow other members to walk out if they can't handle accepting what they perceive to be an exhibition of perversion? "We tried very hard to walk a fine line between biblical authenticity—faithfulness to our understanding of the Bible—and compassionate concern," Cumings says.

I hope Cumings was seriously questioning whether to reject " an isolated, deeply troubled person who is seeking the Lord." Isn't that Church 101? Don't reject people? Hopefully that was some poorly executed literary technique.

But Cumings seriously considers he has some duty as a pastor to keep his church members isolated from anyone who, at best, challenges their morality, at worst, makes them uncomfortable. I always thought Church should challenge people and make us and make us comfortable. God does. Let's say it is perverse. But perversion is all around us and, while it will and should offend us, it won't really hurt us until we affirm it. I know it's contrary to popular Christian belief, but physical proximity to transexuals won't hurt you! But the Church is believing she must do more than just not affirm it - but it can't figure out what. If only she'd realize that. Maybe without her obsession for action, we could gather at the Table and really talk this thru.

And I always wonder, what about those allies who affirm trans people but are not trans themself? Would the Church discipline them like they discipline trans affirming people who are trans? Like deny leadership roles? In what I've seen, she doesn't discriminate between those who affirm and those who don't affirm, unless the affirmer is themself trans. Thus she's acting not on the belief, but the person - exactly what she denies. That is, the Church says she denying Nemecek her job and ordination not because she's trans but because she's trans affirming. I suppose isn't the combination which results in behavior the Church works against. Somehow someone's theology is far less important than what she does. Yes, I suppose that's it. I just needed to think out loud.

Trans article in ChristToday

2008-02-19T13:03:00.008-06:00

I'm excited to say that last week Christianity today featured a lengthy article about on trans people! The full text of The Transgender Moment. Not that the article is particularly good, but I praise any good attempt that doesn't use the p(erv*rt) word. I want to remark on it, first the postives:

The article begins with the story of J. Nemecek, a MtF who transitioned while a prof at Spring Arbor University, a conservative Christian college. Always nice to start with a real person and a real experience.
Another story is of Bill Gray, a MtF, whom a Florida church embraces and even gets a job.
The story of Drew Gordon, a FtM and current Methodist minister and even allowing her quote that the Holy Spirit led her to transition.

OK, now the long list of negatives: the lack or research, hidden agendas, and weasel words.

I'm not sure about the title "Trans Moment." Feeling transgender stays with a person for life and in our culture it will only become more prevalent thru out this 21st century. ~~I won't say the title is trying to minimize something about the trans issues, but it is suspicious.~~

The whole article assumes that transgender=transexual. Wrong. I love and support my transexual brothers and sisters just as my cisgender siblings, but we are different. By ignoring the variety with the trans community, you stereotype us.
Page 1: "Advocates say transgendered individuals are at great risk . . ." Fact - but misleading. The US census even says that trans people are at great risk. We are more at risk than gays, blacks, Muslims, Jews, and we're even under-reported compared to every other group.
Page 2: "In order to be diagnosed with gender identity disorder, there must be a strong desire to be the other sex . . ." False. First, the author, Kennedy, implies that trans=GID which is false. I am trans but would not be diagnosed with GID. Second, desire to change sex nor body is not required for diagnosis.
Page 2: " some 13 states have laws prohibiting employers and landlords from discriminating" Wrong. It's 12. The number 13 is often thrown around because Wash DC has this law.
Page 3: "Whether mentioned in Scripture or not, the transgender movement clashes with traditional Christian theology that teaches the only God-given expression of human sexuality is between a man and woman who are married." There are so many levels of problems with this statement, I could write a book! To be brief: 1 it is a straw argument that trans people are homosexual! 2 it is hypocritical of CT, a Protestant publication, to use tradition as argument when they don't like something but ignore tradition when they deem it negative. (For Protestants, that's most of the time.) Sola scriptura, my dear Protestants, anyone? 3 Church Tradition has little or nothing to say about trans people now or ever because it has always assumed that trans people didn't exist, at least not in the Church. No wonder the theology doesn't accomidate us! I love Tradition, but to talk about trans issues, we need new wineskins.
Page 3: CT quotes Warren Throckmorton. Throckmorton had his own criticism on the usage of this "quote," so I leave it to him to explain.
Page 3: "Individual evangelical congregations across the land are trying to figure out how to welcome lonely, hurting, seeking visitors who exhibit GID without offending long-term members." First, if they're afraid that welcoming an outcast in the name of Jesus will offend some members, then for the sake of Christ, please offend them! Did Jesus worry about offending when He welcomed whores? Samaritans? Tax collectors? Lepers? Did Philip worry when he welcomed a eunuch? Offend them! Perhaps their political correctness is the reason I've never heard of these churches. Perhaps that's why trans people think Christians hate us. I know the elders of the church is your family, but Jesus said if you cannot hate your own family, you cannot be His disciple.
Page 4: "American Psychiatric Association, which declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973, still classifies the condition of transgender as a disorder." OK, common mistake, but still wrong. The APA answers this exact question on their site.
Page 4: "Barber says the political left wing is facilitating more gender confusion by counseling the afflicted to feel good about themselves rather than find a treatment for this disorder." If Barber had read what the APA says, Barber would know we're doing exactly that.
Page 4: ""You are what you are—male or female," Barber says." Only ignoring the 3% of people who are intersex. And if you ignore .05% of the human genome, you get a monkey.
Page 4, using a Family Research Council quotes. Funny, Kennedy doesn't mention the sole function of FRC is lobbying. I don't think a group that first denied global warming exists, then denied human are responsible, and is made of lawyers, not scientists anyway should be talking about Scripture and science.
Page 4 "Outside quote: "The pressure for acceptance is ultimately a challenge to the authority of Scripture and a violation of natural law." What? I thought there was no Scripture relevance? Regarding natural law, see previous bullet point.
Page 4 Same guy In the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender movement there is a tendency to continually push the envelope in trying to demand the acceptance of what most people perceive to be unusual behavior." This sick accusation that the LGBT movement is moving from gay to trans to polygamy pedophilia to beastiality to marrying your toaster is absurd and totally unfounded. Check our record: the gay movement include trans from the beginning and vice versa. Remember Stonewall? Trans people started that. We've never pushed other things. The only move to plural marriage comes from Mormons (Christians!) and the move toward pedophilia from cisgender people.
Page 4 In a couple ways strongly implying that trans=gay, including a quote from Alan Chambers. Hands down, psychologists agree that transgenderism is not homosexuality. Chambers's organization, Exodus, seems to agree: http://exodus.to/content/view/60/55/
All of page 5 is about Jerry Leach. Leach is the only person I've found in the "ex-trans" ministry. I thought he disappeared because he website was down for so long, as recently as a couple months ago. Some day he'll even get a real email. Or real website, or office, or book besides what comes from his home printer. Until then, he's not only the best ex-trans ministry, he's the only thing. ~~He's removed his biography from his site, but I'm quite sure~~ he has no education in counseling. His only claim to authority is being himself ex-trans and that no one else is rivaling him. If I were suddenly to reject my gender, I'd be just as qualified as him. Of course, CT only describes him as a "director" of an ex-trans ministry and gives him more space than anyone else in the article. Meanwhile, there are affirming trans people with PhDs, ordinations, and published books under their belts. Yet CT implies Leach is more qualified.
Whole article: over-usage of the word activists when referring to trans people and groups. If you haven't caught on, "activist" is EV-speak for "evil manipulator who will pillage and destroy to manifest your nightmares." Or more realistically, "manipulator." Like I said, we're too poor and shy and too jaded by the Church and others' own manipulation of us. But if by "activist" you mean trying to change laws and the status quo, Yes we are. So is CT itself. And FRC, Exodus, and Focus on the Family. Evangelism, too, is activism.
I might say the biggest mistake of this article is not to address transgender intersex people. The crux of the Church's current criticism with trans people is that "they deny their bodies." Trans intersex people make that impossible, making the Church's whole theory of gender impossible. But I guess that wasn't worth the one paragraph to mention?

Speaking of throwing babies out, the article does the same with cross dressors, drag queens, and some genderqueer people. Cross dressors and drag queens aren't denying their bodies, they're just pretending and having some fun. Some genderqueer people love their bodies as much as anyone - it's the gender attached they don't like. But CT can't acknowledge their presence either because they haven't figured a way to criticize them yet.

There's one more poor quote, but I won't blame CT since it was an outside quote and a very common mistake. Page 3: "Creech says. "Scripture doesn't address the issues of transgender experience." It does: eunuchs. See Peterson Toscano's blog entry on the CT article and eunuchs.

Now, notice I not once criticized Kennedy's point of view, just showing that it is irrational. There's a lot of bad research. Is he an idiot? Readers of CT more devoted than I can compare his other articles to see if he's just innocently stupid. Is he lazy? Writing on transgenderism requires a lot new ideas and weeks of work if you're new to it. If he's lazy, that could explain it. The last possibility is that he's just lying.

Update: A second article on Christianity Today.

Update: See strike-outs.

Update: Julie Nemecek points out even more factual errors.

I never appeared on campus as me until after the settlement. The “wig and dress on campus as a reason for dismissal” was a total fabrication by a usually reliable journalist. This was then repeated by journalists who piggyback on the work of others rather than do their own fact checking. Had I seen the story before publication, I could have prevented the continuing life of this falsehood.
My name change was in 2007, not 2005.

LTBG in 08 primaries

2008-02-06T18:42:00.001-06:00

LGBT issues seem non-existent in this campaign in the mass media. I hear it LGBT spheres and Evangelical spheres, but no where else. I see that as good since people will have a clear mind without others shouting.

Christian-trans article

2008-01-09T14:25:00.001-06:00

See http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070427/27115_Transgender_Kid:_God_Made_a_Mistake.htm

Nothing new, but a rare intersection of Christian media with a trans person. Throckmorton, quoted in the article, sometimes shares my views and sometimes doesn't. In this article he does.

2007-12-29T20:41:00.000-06:00

Of course I don't usually like gender stereotypes, but I thought this quite clever. Of course, Santa, like Christ, is neither female nor male but a sacred androgyne epitomizing primitive qualities that transcend gender; in shis case, generosity.

I think that deep down inside, Santa Claus may really be a woman....

I hate to be the one to defy sacred myth, but I believe he's really a she.
Think about it. Christmas is a big, organized, warm, fuzzy, nurturing
social deal, and I have a tough time believing a traditional "guy" could possibly pull it all off!

For starters, the vast majority of "real men" don't even think about selecting
gifts until Christmas Eve. It's as if they are all frozen in some kind
of Ebenezerian Time Warp until 3 p.m. on Dec. 24th, when they - with
amazing calm - call other errant men and plan for a last-minute shopping
spree.

Once at the mall, they always seem surprised to find only Ronco
products, socket wrench sets, and mood rings left on the shelves. (You
might think this would send them into a fit of panic and guilt, but my
husband tells me it's an enormous relief because it lessens the 11th
hour decision-making burden.) On this count alone, I'm convinced Santa
is a woman. Surely, if he were a man, everyone in the universe would
wake up Christmas morning to find a rotating musical Chia Pet under the
tree, still in the bag.

Another problem for a "he-Santa" would be actually getting there. First of all,
there would probably be no reindeer because they would all be dead, gutted and
strapped on to the rear bumper of the sleigh amid wide-eyed, desperate
claims that buck season had been extended. Blitzen's rack would already
be on the way to the taxidermist.

Even if the male Santa DID have reindeer, he'd still have transportation
problems because he would inevitably get lost up there in the snow and
clouds and then refuse to stop and ask for directions. Add to this the
fact that there would be unavoidable delays in the chimney, where the
Bob Vila-like Santa would stop to inspect and repoint bricks in the
flue. He would also need to check for carbon monoxide fumes in every gas
fireplace, and get under every Christmas tree that is crooked with a level to
straighten it to a perfectly upright 90-degree angle.

Other reasons why Santa can't possibly be a man:
- "real men" can't pack a bag.
- "real men" would rather be dead than caught wearing red velvet.
- "real men" would feel their masculinity is threatened by having to be seen hanging around with all those elves.
- "real men" don't answer their mail.
- "real men" would refuse to allow their physique to be described, even in jest,
as anything remotely resembling a "bowlful of jelly."
- "real men" aren't that interested in stockings unless somebody's wearing them, and besides, having to do the "Ho Ho Ho" thing would seriously inhibit their ability to pick up women.
- And finally, being responsible for Christmas would require a commitment.

Drummer boy

2007-12-29T14:02:00.000-06:00

Aww

Shirts

2007-12-09T20:06:00.001-06:00

For the second or third time I'm trying to make a queer shirt. The first time I wanted to make a shirt that just said "Queer". To my delight tonight, I found someone already made it:

I also like the idea on this shirt (tho I would have executed it much differently):

This time I wanted to make something that was strange and mysterious enough to start a conversation with someone and that expresses an idea both profound and important to me. I decided on the phrase, "God is Transgender." It's simple which is always nice and only edgy after you understand it, hopefully to not be too offensive. But a little, Yes. I'm frustrated with the font; I had difficulty finding a typeface both queer and serious.

Nifty

2007-11-26T16:22:00.001-06:00

I found I can display a feed of my posts only from a certain label as a dynamic page and feed. Eg, http://ephilei.blogspot.com/search/label/trans

Please understand us

2007-11-26T16:11:00.003-06:00

This comes from an ex-gay group in Eastern Europe, Watchmen on the Walls, from a recent conference in Latvia about how corrupt America is:

Sexually immature kids . . . are forced to cross-dress in order to feel which orientation is inside them.

I don't have any idea who trans people are or how we think but that doesn't matter to them. The more absurd the remark, the more passionate a response from those listening. All that matters is hearing "kids . . . forced . . . cross-dress . . . orientation" and they get upset with no desire to understand.

They are being told that if you are born as a boy, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will become a man. If you were born as a girl, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will become a woman. It’s all happening now.

The speaker is not an anthropologist, or he'd know that throughout human history boys did not automatically become men - they have to earn it. He assumes that every adult male is a man, which is not true, has never been true, and everyone has always known it. Being a man means marrying and bearing children which includes sexual virility, being responsible for his family providing for their monetary means, physical protection, and their respectability. Manhood requires a decent skillset, physical and emotional strength, and perhaps above all, manhood requires honor. All these things were achieved via the rite of passage from boyhood into manhood. A boy failing this rite or any of these actions was not a man. Eunuchs were not men because they could not have sex or produce children. This is why it was so utterly important for Abraham to have a son. But I digress.

Concerning girls becoming women, I'm unsure. Womanhood is more a right than a rite, so I don't know how deviancy could come about. Perhaps if a girl or woman completes the man's rite of passage, she becomes a man? Ruth and the proverbial Proverbs 31 woman are both described as "manly", but that's not necessarily manhood itself. Being barren was certainly a tragedy to her gender, but I've never heard nor can I conclude that her state prevents or strips her woman gender altogether.

I wish (in vain!) that before accusing us of destroying the social institution of gender, that preachers would take the effort to learn some historical context about the institution first. It would clear a lot of anxiety on both sides.

Why do Christians hate global warming?

2007-10-14T14:58:00.000-05:00

In the magazine of the conservative denomination I grew up in, my former pastor wrote an article about global warming and how Christians should show concern (online here). I hadn't read the actual article yet, I read the letters to the editor today. It sounded as if Snyder had committed blasphemy! Comments abounded like "Our three children don’t need you shoveling this refuse into our home via your vile magazine." Many readers ended their subscriptions. With that response, I had to read the original, I did, and was almost disappointed by the lack of controversy. It was no different than any newspaper article. Thesis: global warming exists and Christians have a responsibility to take action.

What's the big deal? Why are Christians so threatened by global warming? Why does the Church doubt its validity so much? I'm sure Christians are the only people with doubts, but we sure make up the majority. It's not as if global warming contradicts our faith in any way. Where does this peculiarity come from? Sounds like a good dissertation topic.

My only estimate is that Christians are essentially more conservative than non-Christians. (By "conservative" here, I mean literally "having a tendency to conserve.") Since the global warming idea didn't exist 40 years ago, we want to conserve that lack of the idea. I admit that's pretty silly sounding, but it's all I've got. Oh, and that somehow global warming became a Democratic issue instead of a Republic issue - not that it seems tied to either party's patterns. Perhaps if Bush had been a spokesperson a decade ago instead of Gore, Christians would be in exactly the opposite spot. I don't know.

Trans Right in IL schools

2007-10-11T16:13:00.000-05:00

Yesterday the Illinois congress passed a bipartisan override of the governor's veto to a bill ensuring the rights of gender identity and sexual orientation are consistent in high schools. 2006 legislation forbids discrimination on the basis of gender identity in public venues in the state, but the status of high schools was an ambiguous area. Among a few other things are the right to create LGBT extra-curricular activities with the same rights as other extra curriculars, freedom to express pro-LGBT views in speech and text, and the right for a queer student not to receive insults and threats and protection from threats. You'd think the last one wouldn't need a specific adjustment to the law, but that's the sad state of our bigotry.

This is very good news for trans students. Apparently Illinois is the first state to do this explicitly making us very progressive. Another score for my home state's midwestern identity confusion.

Greenville in podcasts

2007-07-27T22:04:00.000-05:00

So my little Greenville IL, epitome of a small, midwestern town, is inexplicably becoming a popular town in podcasts. Here's the latest, a short blurb from the Onion: Click to play

My new website

2006-11-12T23:46:00.001-06:00

If you have a blog or website, I'd appreciate anyone linking to a site I'm building for a local non-profit org: cphar.org. There's nothing to see yet, I just want Google to notice it.

Crazy Grade

2006-11-10T13:03:00.000-06:00

On my bio test I missed 44 points out of 103, but I'm supposed to add 11 points and multiply points missed by 90% which leaves me at 70%. I don't understand it, but I guess it's good.

The Code Linux

2006-11-09T15:32:00.001-06:00


My inspiration for my last column article. Not a bad intro to Linux and good Finnish subtitles!

Tech Myth Hero

2006-11-09T15:26:00.000-06:00

I've missed a few, but here's my column this week. Feels like I've been a linux kick lately. So on my box, I have a command line only. Not fun, but I'm sure learning a lot this way!

The Technology Myth: A Hero

The technology myth has a hero. His name is Linux.. His cosmic origins birth from GNU, but first a brief history.

"Let me make an analogy. An analogy between software and recipes." They both have two forms. The first is a set of instructions that are followed to make their second and ultimate form, the end product. The end is what's important, but it would never exist without the instructions. When you find a good recipe, you'll likely share it with a friend or family. You might even want to tinker with the recipe to suite your needs. (Like making it vegetarian!) With software, sadly, you often cannot see the instruction recipe, called the source code. Someone thought that wasn't right - GNU.

At opposition to GNU is the evil commerical model of software. The "do whatever you half to make money." A recond example is of Norton Antivirus complaining that the new Windows is too safe and now they can't sell their anti-virus software. Imagine after sharing a recipe for your favorite veggie with your family and then getting arrested for piracy. The commerical model thrives on consumers having forced ignornace. I have a $200 copy of Windows that's now useless because Microsoft won't let me install it how I need to. Microsoft is not only your scapegoat to blame all your computer problems on, they're also just plain greedy.

GNU (manifested in the avatar of - well, GNU the gnu, an ox-like animal) is open source software for an everything on a computer system. Open source software always has its source code available. Anyone can modify it (if they're so technically inclined) or share it with anyone freely. Open source usually synomous with the Free Software movement. Free as in freedom. The software happens to priced for free, but that's not really the point. Free Software is all about community, collaboration, and sharing. It's about being in control over what's in your box.

Just as with the myths of old, GNU, the creator god of free(dom) software is a distant and unapproachable sky god. As seen by his ox-like appearance, he is emotionless and dangerous. And just as in the myths of old, a younger and amiable god is sent by the sky god and embodies the same spirit. His name is Linux and he is manifested in the avatar Tux, a penguin. GNU and Tux. Think the Force and Anakin Skywalker. Illuvatar and Gandalf. God the Father and Jesus.

Linux is much more than a nerd's hobby, it is a symbol for freedom and community. It shows that money is not the greatest force. It proves that people can volunteer to create something great. Linux is specially built to run well on low-end computers, common in undeveloped countries. So Linux demonstrates affluence American and European promiment programmers spreading wealth across the poverty line. A plan to donate millions of laptops to third world children runs on Linux. Of course. My spirit was encouraged one spring break in Chicago coming across some sidewalk vandalism proclaiming, "Peace, Love, Linux."

Unfortunately, this story isn't over. Windows still holds the world in captivity. Linux is probably the most advanced operating system in the world, but not yet universally accessible. It's a cute and skilled penguin, but comes with an owners manual the size of the Bible. Until it becomes a better people person, Windows remains the devil in a red dress to lure the unsuspecting - Who mourns in lonely exile here, until the son of GNU appears.

I Know I'm a Nerd

2006-11-08T12:23:00.000-06:00

I knew I was a nerd today when I realized I'm using a Mac to run Linux to read previews of Windows Vista. It looks dumb, by the way. Like an unintelligent girl who doesn't know she's wearing too much makeup. Glad I won't be using it except when I have to.

Big biology test today. I'm screwed.

I'm praying my desktop can survive all the way through another Linux install, otherwise I think it's garbage.

I'm still waiting to hear about Egypt.

The end.

Psalters

2006-10-31T19:45:00.000-06:00

	I finally got some time to organize some more pictures. Here are the Psalters playing at Greenville last month. Simply amazing. I like them a lot. I think pretty darn good pictures, too. From Psalters

Louis + Menu

2006-10-19T17:16:00.001-05:00

My friend Louis and I were studying St. Anselm for a Philosophy of Religion test tonight. It was a strange and uncomfortable experience. Louis is an art/religion double major and one of the students I respect most on campus for his opinions and insights into such things. He's often the guy who raises questions and ideas that a lot people can't even understand, let alone answer. So I felt strange tonight that he had to depend on me to explain a lot of concepts that I understood weeks ago. It's alien to me that someone be humble about their incomprehension. I'm more used to people not understanding and becoming quiet or changing the subject. "I don't know" is too rare a phrase on the lips of intellects.

I suppose it's not unusual that I understand philosophy or religion that others don't, but it wasn't comfortable to "show off." My response, which I don't like either, is that I made myself appear unsure about things I knew absolutely. I think I'd rather people think me too dumb than too smart. Why is that?

Other things on my menu tonight:
lima bean/corn soup
big cup of java
Indian hijras
cannabalized bread
Vespers and Compline (these ones minus the blood transfusion, tonight)
study of the transgendered adam, if I have time

FreeCycler Near Me

2006-10-18T09:29:00.000-05:00

FreeCycle is in the Greenville area. Yay!

I Heart Heartly

2006-10-14T11:54:00.000-05:00

So I wouldn't have been so stressed this week if I hadn't volunteered for an extra newspaper editorial:

I Heart Heartly

I mean - Hartley. And the entire religion department. As I travel my final semester as a GC religion major, I become increasingly and exceedingly appreciative and excited about the education I'm participating in.
To be fair, we're not the biggest school. Unlike the music and ed departments, a whopping dozen students become religion majors, with a few more ministry majors. Our professors don't write books (that I'm aware of) and aren't quoted for their reviews of books. We're not famous and until I return on a chariot of fire and fame to teach myself, we never will be.
Yet I would confidently chose our faculty over legendary authors and orators. I hear the great authors regardless when I read and for much less money and without writing papers. The potential difference in school is an opportunity for flesh as well as words. The profs here are taking full advantage of that potential. They listen to students, seek to take on our perspective, ask questions and respond to our questions. Beyond that, they open their office. They eat in our dining room and invite us to eat in their dining room. There is a story of some students of one of those a fore mentioned legendary giants of academia. There was an extraordinary time when they actually visited his house. When they saw the bathroom, they stood in awe. "We didn't think you used a bathroom." Fortunately, I cannot share in that awe.
For instance, last Sunday a religion professor (who might wish to stay anonymous) attended a potluck with me, then engaged me in a two hour conversation about biblical inerrancy and ceremony, and then played with me in a giant parachute on Scott Field. And then talked about gospel hermeneutics. And isn't that exactly what Jesus did. Come off the pedestal; eat; talk; play; talk. Other schools' students boast of the one time in four years they had coffee with a professor. Bah!
Yet that might be said of any of GC's glorious faculty. (Personally, Dr. Iler throws the best parties.)
What seems to make GC's religion department shine is the particular approach to Christianity's sticky issues. At first glance, it does not approach them. There is no lecture debunking Calvinism or Six Day Creationism or affirming the Free Methodist doctrines of sanctification or Memorialism. I bet you've never heard of those doctrines. It's not laziness or poor planning and it's not a covert plot to wash you with their own doctrine while you're in a false sense of security.
In fact, you probably know religion classes (and their COR201, 301, and 302 counterparts) wisp us out from our security blankets. This is the typical criticism of unwary students. But pay attention to the method and I think you'll agree they're not out to destroy our faith: The method of destruction is to quote some high statistic or authority (probably Scripture) and show how incompatible your belief is with that source and therefore you're wrong. GC's method has an important but significant difference: they confront you with ideas, not facts. Facts have no feeling - you can't empathize with them and you can learn to ignore them. Ideas are alive. You might not like them, but they won't disappear. Either you become their friend or you leave. Profs don't want you to leave the faith; they want us to commune with these new truths. (A wise writer in the Technology Myth column this week says some nice things about this idea.)
Here's the clincher and my motivation for this editorial: Greenville's religion faculty taught me to listen. I don't know if I was bad at it before, but I think I'm pretty good now and I see GC's fingerprints all over me. In my various conversations, I occasionally encounter a person who simply cannot even comprehend something outside their previous ideas. That thought has recently scared me more and more. It's equivalent to going deaf, blind, or illiterate. Isolation from new ideas is permanent, academic death. Our two best courses are Foundations of Doctrine and Methods of Theology. They both don't talk about theology, they talk about talking about theology. They are interested in the deep assumptions of our faith.
GC religion department, you are my savior.

You Know, that Feeling

2006-10-14T11:37:00.000-05:00

You that feeling when you're so closing to failing at something and then find out all your stress was in vain? The deadline for my Egptian semester application semester was supposed supposed to be this Monday (that is, everything had to be received in the mail). So after a lot of running around and mostly fearing that one item would get delayed in the mail, the deadline has been extended at the last minute for another two weeks. I suppose that's really a good thing, because now everything's done. But I'm not really happy about it.

I hope my biology test will end up like that too.

Tech Myth: Tech Must Die

2006-10-14T11:35:00.000-05:00

The next action packed episode of my column:

Technology Must Die

I have to confess that my last article was not completely honest. There was an important element that I left out. Last week I wrote that the central theme of myth is of resurrection. Myths, which are stories that transcend our selves to communicate deep and universal truth, always come back around to the issue of resurrection. This includes the myths of religion, literature, film, folklore, and even technology. Well, I'd like to think technology.
The essential truth of the myth of resurrection is made of three parts: death, liminality, and rebirth. Technology is extremely good at rebirth. How else would else would our generation have access to the glories of Howdy Doody from $1 DVDs at the supermarket? A 1300 year old Qur'an was found recently and technology played an integral role.
The problem with technology and resurrection is that before resurrection, there must be death. Am I going too fast? Moses could never have become Isreal's leader without first "dying" to his citizenship as an Egyptian. Luke Skywalker could not become a Jedi without the death of his legal guardians and "dying" to his home planet. For a greater good to come, something significant must occur that signals and enforces leaving the old lesser good (or downright bad) behind. This symbolizes the critical need to clear space in our soul where something new can grow or be inserted. There is simply not enough room in the human psyche - something has to go.
The step after death is illuminality - the period of time where that empty space is cleaned and purified. Like a garden, the soil is churned and given fresh nutrients. Buddhists in an area of China will send their children to the monastery for several days during a rite of passage - their first away from their parents. At that time they are not addressed by their real names and their heads are shaved. Also this shows the cleansing of the old self. Christians will recognize this theme in conversion: dying to self and to sin to prepare room for the Holy Spirit "fill our hearts."
Now think to technology. Technology fulfills the the resurrection process of others, but lacks any death of its own. Technology is one of those rare places that focuses on bringing news things. Constantly. "Nothing new under the sun" applies less to technology than anything. Technology focuses on the new; exploring new places; inventing new mechanisms; dreaming new ideas. It wouldn't be technology if it didn't. It only fits then, that it's out with the old, in with the new. That broken car and outdated computer are not admired. The Amish who reject motors for animals are considered anti-technology. With the exception of a few artists turning old junk into art,
If we want to embrace the digital age lifestyle, we must learn to accept and utilize death. Or perhaps technology will mature to learn to value the death and rebirth, not only regular life. Until one of those happens, we'll have to approach our new culture with caution. And those timeless methods of resurrection will need to be heeded in greater measure.

Trailblazing technology

2006-10-09T23:01:00.000-05:00

So I'm rather ashamed to say I've had my Mac for about three weeks and I just now installed a word processor. I used writely quite a bit which is amazing, but I realized it's not a replacement for normal word processing. I'm personally boycotting Microsoft which means using OpenOffice. It's perfect except that it's not obvious how to install it on a Mac. That's a first. Still, it's worth saving the $150 or so from Microsoft Office.

By the way, I just realized that operating systems seem obsessed with the letter X:
Window XP
Mac OS X
Linux's GUI is called X
Running Unix GUI apps (like OpenOffice) on Mac OSX uses X11

Twin

2006-10-09T22:22:00.000-05:00

Oh my gosh! Randy Bergen has the exact same strengths as me. I thought that's supposed to be stastically impossible.

Tech Myth: Resurrection

2006-10-05T03:55:00.000-05:00

Here is week two of my column:

You always want to start general, getting the big picture capturing the essence of the subject within which all the details are comprehended. Unless you're a good author; in that case you keep your readers guessing until the end; I'm not that good. Because myth is a story transcending circumstance to communicate a universal truth, the truth should transcend media. That is, the essence of religious myth, literary myth, and technological myth should be the same. If I'm to follow the sages of Myth, I must say that essence is Resurrection.
Christians should not be at all surprised to find Resurrection in the center; Jesus was rather obsessed about dying to this world and gaining life through Him. Joseph Campbell, the greatest mythologist and non-Christian, discovered that all ancient mythology centers on death and return with something greater. I dare say every great modern novel and film, those containing transcendant truths. Even Pixar's The Incredibles features super heroes who die to the crime-fighting world and struggle to revive their old lives. The "hope of the resurrection" is what we all identify with.
Technology can be no different. Technology continually seeks to re-invent old pleasures (or boring business chores) with a new splash. I remember sharply the feeling of listening to American HiFi bicycling down a busy Chicago street on an iPod. There was a freedom in the music both recollecting old enthusiasm and new chainlessness. Books, comedy, family, learning, art, and even friendship find new and renewed meaning through technology. Seniors are receiving better eye sight through laser surgery than they ever experienced.
But it's not enough to state facts. Myth is story. So I regale my favorite resurrection story. Internet historian will recall the famous Browser Wars of the mid 90's. Back when the Web was young and easily influenced, two web browsers fought for popularity and to shape the future of the web: Internet Explorer and Netscape. In the heat of battle, Microsoft employees placed a ten foot "e", the Internet Explorer logo, on Netscape's law, surely akin to the ancient, Celtic fear tactics. After several bloody years (which equals half a century in Internet time) Navigator lost position beyond hope and then end was declared in 1999.
That, however, was only the beginning. Netscape declared its browser dead and sent its code into the chaotic netherworld of open source. Open source was known for being a lair of extremely intelligent geeks but rarely producing something useful. Still, Netscape hoped that its browser might find redemption there, renaming the project Mozilla. An army of geeks, especially fired Netscape employees, collected under Mozilla's banner to combat Internet Explorer's monopoly (and general hatred of Microsoft). The result was Phoenix, named after symbolic bird of resurrection. Renamed Firefox later, the new browser returned to the surface of the technology. It was named the Best Software of 2005 and any techie will agree it now kicks Internet Explorer's shiny, blue butt.
Now whenever I load up my resurrected Fiery Fox, I can't help but connect with this ancient myth. It reminds me of the needed death to inefficiencey and resurrection hope for my own soul and body and all I hold dear.

Technology Myth: A Preface

2006-10-05T03:53:00.000-05:00

For those outside GC, here's the first article in my newspaper column, The Technology Myth.

A Preface

I never liked news. So it comes as great surprise to me that I ended up writing a news column of all things. A couple years back I took some time off from college in the woods of Wisconsin and, equally surprising, I started reading the news, mostly technology news. It was a good time-filler, but I never stopped. I began to realize that what I was reading intriguing not because it was factual or that I was obsessed or bored. It was, in fact, a myth.
But let me explain first, because this part of the story confuses people. In plain speak, a myth is just a false statement. However, in religion, literature, and anthropology, a myth is much more, so listen up. A myth is story that communicates deep and timeless truth for every person. Thus, a myth is always true. Myths attract us by metaphors, adventure, extreme characters, and fantastical events. Myths in American culture usually appear in books and movies. A few examples are The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. They may not be historical, but their themes resonate with us deeply enough that we realize the facts don't matter.
A myth can be historical, though. September 11 and World War II were myths because their obvious lessons profoundly impact us. Similiarly (hold your cries of blasphemy) every narrative in the Bible is a myth. C.S. Lewis remarked that the Gospel is the point where Myth intersects History. On a smaller scale, family histories often contain myths, like the death of my grandfather. Through my experience, I think technology may be yet another myth wherein we can glean meaning for ourselves.
Over the coming semester, I intend to continue exploring the possibilty that technology is a myth. I say possibility, because I admit I'm not thorougly convinced that the fear and awe born from Darth Vader and Hitler can be replicated by Bill Gates, nor the juxtaposition of humanity and divinity of Hercules and Jesus matched by cloning DNA. However, the giddiness of my prof today as he learned to use the Smart Board gut wrenching while watching An Inconvient Truth about carbon dioxide emissions kindles my curiosity such that I cannot discard the interplay between technology and psyche.
Our Information Age culture so disregards the ancient myths and ceremonies and leaves individuals to struggle to define purpose beyond their own wants. Read Jameson's column, [insert name of column here], for excellent, related insights. I hope that as we hurdle farther and farther from the old symbols and meanings that we can reach out and discover new meaning - or else discover that we need to turn around. And I hope you travel with me and email your thoughts.
Oh, I also might report some news. Maybe.

Pre-children

2006-10-04T02:28:00.000-05:00

Here's a random observation I just had: fetuses aren't treated like human beings, even by Christians. I remember multiple times when someone would state the number of people in a room when a pregnant woman was included but her child was not. Similarly, have you ever heard of a funeral for a fetus after a miscarrage? Why not, if it is as much a person as you or me? And why don't they have names? When parents already know the child's sex and have decided a name, they still use the language of "her name will be so and so." There's also the language of "I'm going to be a mother/father." There's also the fact that we count age by birth, not conception, though I'd blame that on tradition and usually not knowing the date of conception and wanting a "birth"day. There's also the legal element: fetuses aren't filed on tax returns. I'm not making some pro-choice arguement; I'm just stating an observation that we despite what we believe, we don't treat unborn children like "real" children.

Ghost?

2006-10-03T20:56:00.000-05:00

You should check out this car commerical from New Zealand. When they finished filming the ad, the people who made it noticed a ghostly white mist moving along the side of the car, and an eerie sound. You may need to turn the volume up, enough to hear it. The ad was never put on TV because of the unexplained ghostly phenomenon. About halfway, as the car goes past the trees, look and you will see the white mist crossing in front of the car then following it along the road. I don't take those things seriously, but it's interesting.

Some Slightly Insightful Church Bashing

2006-10-03T15:18:00.000-05:00

The problem with Christianity is that's too much belief and not enough action. Now, when I say Christianity, I mean the set of historical beliefs, practices, symbols, and values in the proportions and emphases defined by most Christians. I don't mean the way those same things were defined by Jesus or Torah.

For one, practice is more practical; it's more important to give to the poor than to know why one should give to the poor, what God thinks about poor people, etc. For another, there is more expressed meaning through practice than belief. Invariably, what a person physically acts will have more influence on their own self than what they think. To be glib, you are what you do, not what you say. For another, Christendom would be far more united if we centered ourselves on actions rather than belief. Denominational divisions are most often from belief than action. Even in Islam where the issues of women's involvement is also debated, their is no division because of it because they are more focused the basic actions - fasting, charity, and prayer. And of course, I think it's more scriptural. I could quote all day where Scipture says to "do this" or "do that," but I'm hard pressed to think of verses that read, "think this" or "believe that."

For instance, this week at Greenville is Global Impact Week. Repeat: impact. But the typical evangelical response in chapel yesterday purposely rejected talking about action and explained what we should think and believe about God and action. It was the same sermon that gets preached in every church at least once a month: God is love and cares about the world and you should too.

On a positive note, the maintenance department at Greenville this year is outstanding! I'm continually amazed by their promptness and organization.

America's Penis

2006-09-25T16:16:00.001-05:00

"The World Trade Center was America's financial penis and Al Quaida had no problem emasculating us." -Patrick

2006-09-14T22:23:00.000-05:00

Every day I get a little closer to becoming Amish. Well, a Feminist, vegan, techie Amish, but I could sacrafice.

The interface on Mac's is certainly ten times better than Windows, but I think Linux might beat them both. Just try telling me this video isn't amazing! Of course, most of the ideas were stolen from Mac OSX, but still.

I Know Reality

2006-09-10T20:24:00.000-05:00

Oh, so funny thing. Last night my friend Sarah, seeking to baffle me with an unanswerable question, asked, "What is real?"

Food lately

2006-09-10T19:50:00.001-05:00

Mmm, I ate that tonight. Asparagus, tomatoes, squash, and green beans in miso broth. I'm really missing tomatillos, though. They would have perfected the meal. I realized as I cooked that over the summer I actually used tomatillos every time I made soup. When I visit Chicago I'll have to stock up.

Amanda was in my apartment at five this morning and decided to make soup too. That was pretty wierd.

I ate Taco Bell yesterday. It was the first time I had any processed food in a week and my stomach hated me for it. I think my body is finally realized what actual healthy food tastes like and its getting spoiled. I've even stopped craving chocolate.

Reality Is

2006-09-08T11:29:00.000-05:00

A couple months ago someone asked me what is real and I confess I had no idea. Certainly it can't be bound to what is physical, because our emotions are real. It's not significance, because many things exist that I don't care or even know about. I realized last night, though. Reality is where God is.

Therefore - if hell is truly the absence of God, then . . .

1.0 Launch

2006-09-06T20:23:00.000-05:00

Well, I've moved from Xanga to blogger and am more or less deciding to continue blogging on into the semester. The JBJ Blog 1.0 launch, if you will. I've tried twice before and quit after a couple entries. The decisive difference is that I've realized that I don't have to update every day - or month - and still feel succesful with it. I got frustrated with the lack of options on Xanga, and Blogger lets you create as much side content as you want. And with no advertisements! You also don't have to be a member to leave comments.

I had a long theology talk with Patrick today. About 3 hours. Patrick is going with me to Egypt, my CSO (night patrol) partner, and just happens to be one of my favorite people on campus. He told me I was the person he felt most comfortable with expressing non-traditional ideas. That felt good. Possibly that felt better than if someone told me I had the best ideas of my own.

On the nerdy side, I'm pretty excited about the Apple announcements next week. It might be the ushering of an online movie store (one that actually works) or the legendary iPhone. Nevertheless, Apple has never failed to surprise and impress. Currently, my MacBook is here. Poor, lil' guy. I'm still trying to think of a name for it. Let me know if you have an idea. My Linux box is Tarpit and my iPod is Rubato.

Too Smart

2006-09-03T16:16:00.000-05:00

So I haven't used MySpace because whenever I log in the "add to friends" link is invisible. Missing that one link makes the whole site worthless. Today I set on trying to fix the problem. After months of searching through foreign lands, warding off magical foes, and rescuing 3 and half princesses, I found the culprit:

a:link[href*=".ad"] img,

It's actually a well meaning piece of code in Firefox that eliminates any links that take you to any ad(vertisement). The problem was "ad" is too close to "add." Because it's code I put into my own Firefox profile a couple years ago, it only affected me. And, I'm so tech savvy that I've been using the same profile for those couple years on every computer I ever tried myspace on (which is about 8 computers). Thus, I'm too smart for my own good. If you'd like to harnass the power of blocking ads (without killing myspace), try these links

addons.mozilla.org/firefox/10 (easy)
floppymoose.com (techy)

You can also now find me on myspace here: myspace.com/ephilei but I don't intend to use it for anything besides finding people.

Transcendental Veg

2006-08-22T21:07:00.000-05:00

I finished Walden today - an absolute joy. Here was one unexpected passage I particularly enjoyed.

I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect. I have tried it again and again. I have skill at it, and, like many of my fellows, a certain instinct for it, which revives from time to time, but always when I have done I feel that it would have been better if I had not fished. I think that I do not mistake. It is a faint intimation, yet so are the first streaks of morning. There is unquestionably this instinct in me which belongs to the lower orders of creation; yet with every year I am less a fisherman, though without more humanity or even wisdom; at present I am no fisherman at all. . . . Beside, there is something essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh, and I began to see where housework commences, and whence the endeavor, which costs so much, to wear a tidy and respectable appearance each day, to keep the house sweet and free from all ill odors and sights. Having been my own butcher and scullion and cook, as well as the gentleman for whom the dishes were served up, I can speak from an unusually complete experience. The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth. Like many of my contemporaries, I had rarely for many years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc.; not so much because of any ill effects which I had traced to them, as because they were not agreeable to my imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects; and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination. I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind. . . .

If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.

Photos

2006-08-17T21:35:00.000-05:00

Of all things, I got inspired today cleaning the pool at work and did some amateur photography in the pool and shower. It kept me well entertained for a good two hours until my batteries died. And most conviently, I had no work to do except make some strides in Walden. There were also no people to get in my way or ask me why I was so strange. (It's hard to imagine anyone at work having any appreciate for art, especially on a construction site.)

I've started posting the photos at my gallery: picasaweb.google.com/masheach

I was initially most fascinated the decrepidation that contrasts with the typically euphoric ambience that pools inspire. I tried to get some capture images that would conjure thoughts and memories of classic "pool time fun" but that was much harder than I thought: Apparently the main imagery of a pool is water. Mostly I contented myself with the cool fish on the walls. The reflection of the flash on the dust is unworldly! though sometimes so strong that it blocks the rest of the shot. The lifeguard office contained a majestic area to play with lighting that I'm still exploring. I'd appreciate anyone's opinions on my work thus far.

Google's free Picasa software is great for basic editing, but for the first time in a long time I wanted to get hardcore. I pulled out my never before used copy of Photoshop. It's actually older (version 7) than what I had gotten spoiled with (Elements 3). I got frustrated with the missing features, mostly "little" things like cropping options and the selection brush. I don't mind learning new software, but learning outdated software? That's silly. If I keep up passionately editing photos, I may justify buying Photoshop. Or it's another reason to buy a Mac because iPhoto is supposed to be fabulous.

Nice sermon

2006-08-13T21:44:00.000-05:00

I heard a great homily at the Episcopal church I've been attending this summer. The first reason it was so good was that it was only 15 minutes! But mostly because he renewed my sense of the importance and magnitude of God's actions. This is by far the greatest goal of a preacher. He reflected the mighty act where Christ gives a piece of his flesh at every Eucharist, where Christians feed on it starvingly because failure to receive the elements would kill them. We should come crawling on our hands and knees to receive such a mighty gift!

God bless those trans and consubstantiation-ists!

Heat wave

2006-08-03T21:44:00.000-05:00

So here's a little tip for Firefox users to blog on xanga quick - bookmark the "new entry" page, under the Bookmarks menu, right click the new bookmark, and set "keyword" to "x" or whatever. Now type "x" or whatever in the address bar and magic! Maybe I'll update more often now.

I was wondering today - seeing as I hate the heat - how is I think I can survive in Egypt where the upper 90s are common. Well, I'm guessing they are. Wait, I looked it up at the summer highs are only 30! (That's the mid 80s to you, Americans.)

De-hyphenating a name

2006-07-10T21:45:00.000-05:00

My last name is a pretty significiant part of my identity, just as much as my first name or nickname. Yesterday Heather, my sister, announced she's engaged to her long-time boyfriend Tim Albano. We all saw it coming, so there wasn't a big reaction. She casually mentioned that she would take his last name. The two ardent feminists voiced our opinion briefly but there wasn't much discussion. The justifications of hyphenating names (if I have ranted to you in person yet) are

Keeping the name of the mother's family alive,
Showing that the family is a dual product of two converging families. Whereas taking the husband's name historically signified that the wife was leaving her family and joining her husband's,
Reaction against the wife sacrificing her identity for her husband's and being "branded" as his property,

and some minor reasons. But since the single name is mostly just a fossil of anbandoned sexism, it's not a huge deal. Then something hit me at work today. Our name not only reflects our family past, but also identifies, defines, and especially labels our family in this generation as a distinct entity! There are lots of Johnson familes and quite a few Bakers, but we are uniquely the Baker-Johnsons - the BJs. I don't care about the survival of our name; if five generations from now there are no Baker-Johnsons or etymological descendant, I'm fine. If the name disappeared now, however, I'd be absolutely tramatized. If Heather abandons "Baker-Johnson," she, in my perspective, abandons our family. She chooses to kill or forget that part of her and the Baker-Johnsons exist fundamentally different and deprived from then on.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a

2006-07-03T21:46:00.000-05:00

No, I never wonder what heaven is like. I guess until I get there, I don't care. To be arrogant, I've got better things to do. I do wonder a lot about what the Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven is about (which are equivalent, thank you Greek 101). Honestly, sometimes that consumes my life. Jesus seemed to care a lot about the Kingdom of Heaven, and very little of this Heaven itself, if he even thinks it exists. "The Kingdom of God is within you." Or, Thomas records the same dialogue as, "The Kingdom of God is spread upon the earth, and people don't see it."

But I suppose I don't think it will be that magnificient. I don't think we'll all have super powers or sit around having picnics and petting lions all day. I'm not even sure it will be 'perfect' in the way we think of. God speaks of transforming hearts and actions, not situations so much. I suspect we'll still have to deal with global warming and relatives we're not thrilled about - we'll just be better at it.

But I'm soure a lot of conservatives would just say I'm falling down the slippery slope because I'm modeling what I can't see after what I can see. Then some day I will stop beleiving in an afterlife altogether. Maybe. Time will tell.

But mostly I think heaven's a crock belief to make Christians feel better. "Don't worry, Grandma's with Jesus now." What bull. That's far from Jesus' "Do not mourn the dead. Let the dead bury the dead." And heaven's a crock to make non-Christians feel worse. "Do you know where you're going after you die?" Compare with Jesus' style of 'take it or leave it.' Jesus spoke as if choosing to follow him was the hardest thing you'll ever do. We speak as if it's the easiest thing we can do. Well, I'd better stop before I rant.