Pop Feminism: Why The Like Button Should Be Jettisoned.

“The comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.”

So, that is what your like or share button gets you. And what the comments actually show is that femenists are losing. Oh, don't get me wrong, women still run the world, but even the guys who read this sort of crap will bust out with the "make me a sandwich" line?

The article was in the Rolling Stones, and Grimes is vague. Most of this stuff she notices comes mainly from being famous. She says she doesn't notice it with her male peers, but these people are pretty insulated from one another. Besides, some of the men are actually going to be coming on to her, much like the women who chase down famous men do. The difference, of course, is that the men who are into Grimes are likely to be creepy. Sad, but hey, I don't have much control over who is in my fan club either.

How different would the world be if people were sharing what they were learning, rather than sharing an excuse not to learn.

Learning is better than Liking

So, since Google has decided to abandon Reader, I have to fool around with all these other RSS products. All the other RSS products, at least so far, haven't implemented that fullscreen view where you can just read through a river of news. Most of these rss products want to be social in some way or the other. Everybody has a like button. As a consequence, if there are any posts shared in anyway, they are cutesy, milquetoast, and often feminist. Middle class chicks with too much time on their hands.

The like button sucks.

Here is a better way. An even smaller group of people- at least I would imagine- than people who use RSS, are people who use Spaced Repetition Software. Now, if you are running a service, where you are putting RSS in front of people's eyes, it wouldn't be too hard to put RSS and stuff people want to remember in front of their eyes according to the SRS algorithm. So, if you just had a reader, with no interest in this, the thing wouldn't appear, but if some really heavy content showed up in a feed one day, and I say to myself, "I really need to remember this," so I queue it into the SRS. Or, maybe it is even more awesome than that, so I right click and make a couple of SRS flash cards out of the original text, and possibly go define some terms that were in the post, and add those to my SRS deck...

Do you see where I am going here?

So, you are running this small service for nuts who actually like both RSS and SRS, and information rich stuff is getting shared. The people who want to learn, tend to learn, and as such, are more likely to leave an enriching comment on a blog. Guess what else is out there that sucks? Comment systems. There are feeds for comments. If the comments are any good, they are likely to cause readers to generate more SRS flash cards. You can develop a reputation for commenters.

Maybe your last attempt to use the wisdom of crowds failed miserably. The answer might be to find a wiser crowd.

What Else Was Happening In Boston?

Given the rather strange nature of events, and the subsequent revelations the these guys had interaction with the F.B.I., and that Russians supposedly warned about them, I would now like to know what, if anything, was either happening or supposed to happen in Boston during this singularly unconstitutional occupation of an American city by government forces.

Is there a way to get news from Boston concerning that time period minus the bombing?

The stupidity of the average American aside, this show of force on American streets was truly astounding. There are people in D.C. who, whether this was accidental or not, have sat up and taken notice. They now know they can pull crap like this off- at least the North East- and be lauded under the right circumstances. It is just hard for me to believe they'd push this hard for two delinquents.

Thus, again, I wonder, what else was happening in Boston? Was something facilitated, was something stopped, or is the state of Mass. just as foolish as it seems?

New Rome Or Planet Haiti

Post-tragedy politics is always ugly, largely because politics is always ugly, and the tragedy just makes it more obvious. The logic of disarming us to make us safe doesn't work too well for many of us when the tragedy itself proves you can't make us safe and therefore we need the tools necessary to defend ourselves.

Another thing that comes into my head is that in some ways we are not Rome; we are Haiti and our owners are really nervous that we will revolt. It is interesting, I suppose, that the inclinations of the Republicans seem to be like Romans fearing the barbarian hordes, while the Democrats tend to be like the French landowners in Haiti, fearing the internal threat of their own slaves revolting.

But, thanks to the Neo-Roman empire, we may have just achieved Planet Haiti. The average Bostonian probably doesn't want to hear about blowback- I wouldn't either, but it does exist, and, unfortunately, the level of global intervention has reached so many levels that practically everyone has a reason to strike out.

The level of internal intervention has been terrible too. You can read the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, etc... You know the government is breaking the laws that are supposed to constrain it, and you know nobody is going to jail for it. You probably also know the country is bankrupt. 'Too big to fail' was never a good idea for corporations, and you can be sure it isn't a good idea for governments either.

Unfortunately, Haiti didn't have a good post-revolt record of governance. We don't want, for instance, the Occupy Now movement, or some random Chechens governing. It seems that if you are smart enough to understand who is guilty, then you tend to be smart enough not to engage in protests, terrorist attacks, etc...

Meanwhile, it seems the only really good advice would be to secede, decentralize, etc...
People are angry primarily at the policies coming out of Washington D.C. under the aegis of the United States of America, this thing that once was a Republic, but is now little more than a zombie. The inertia of power keeps it going as politicians can probably see the wall coming, but they also see the advantage to themselves if they stay in and take for as long as they can.

How can Boston be safe? Free Boston. An independent Boston is less likely to be a target, because it will no longer be connected with our slave owners in D.C.

Soothing The Single Mother's Conscience: Not Necessarily A Good Thing

Via Taylor Marshall I find the pope doesn't like any restrictions being placed on the baptism of infants.

Now Taylor Marshall is quick to find precedent, and rightly so. From the infant's perspective, that is.

But what I worry about is in the title up there. Will it help? Will it hurt? One can argue the bar has already been lowered to the point where it doesn't matter, but could this sort of thing encourage more out of wed-lock pregnancies?

Bitcoin Needs To Be Put To The Test

Bitcoin might be awesome. I don't think it really meets the definition of money, but it may still provide a way for market order to emerge globally, in direct competition to governments. Bitcoin, as a network, may be far more important than whether or not Walmart ever accepts them as currency.
But, in order for Bitcoin to prove out it's awesomeness, it must be stepped on by USG, survive, and thrive. Technically it can. It is peer-to-peer, so it will be a lot harder than, say, shutting down Facebook. If the government wants to shut down Facebook, well they've got a particular place to target. If they want to do that for Bitcoin, well, they've got to go many places. It may still be doable, but it is far more problematic.
So, a really heavy handed attempt to end Bitcoin could actually lead to its widespread adoption. There are rumors of ddos attacks on particular Bitcoin related businesses, which leads me to wonder if some in government understand this and have chosen clandestine responses rather than overt ones precisely for this reason.

The Perfect Must Be One

With the questionable nature of time addressed, and the possibility of novelty, we now have an interesting situation in which God, while being perfect, has an affinity for us imperfect conscious beings. Another function to address is consciousness as complexity- oddly enough we provide both novelty and order. Our own bodies are much more ordered and complex than a similar amount of living cells arranged haphazardly on the forest floor. And then, a similar amount of dead stuff is even less ordered. Entropy is boring to an ever-present God.
Now, I want to introduce the concept that the perfect must be one. We cannot have, for instance, three perfect beings that are not one, because then there would be some sort of weirdness- what if one was more perfect than the other? The perfection must be the essence- indeed in some ways it must surpass being as a defining characteristic.
All that is in the created world exists, so it is important to understand there is something above and beyond mere existence that defines the uncreated. Herein lies the mystery of the Trinity.
Here we have three divine persons in one being, and the revealed action of these divine beings is that of the perfect sacrificing itself for the imperfect. The incarnation of Christ, His sacrifice, resurrection, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit amongst the people are actions of the perfect providing a way for the imperfect to become perfect.
Indeed, we are presented with the seemingly laughable exhortations to be perfect and to be one.
So, from the perfect to the imperfect, there is a straightforward sense of moving toward us. God will be all in all. But for the individual human, the road to perfection is non-linear. Perfection seems all the farther away as we try and the asymptote seems daunting. We know that we will be like Him, but it is unclear that this journey has any endpoint.