Bill Murray attends student party in Scotland, does dishes.

I'm not sure what it says that I think this sort of thing is newsworthy. At least I'm not alone.

A Good Link on Oil Prices

I'm gonna bet that CNN Money quoting Forbes has the right answer on why oil prices dropped. A good, quick read on how the price of oil is influenced.

Sarah and Jenn

A friend of mine just posted this to a MySpace bulletin: it's a story about the 10th anniversary of two girls who were murdered when I was in 11th grade. I knew Sarah and Jen, and (mentioned further down) Katie. They were all in my class in high school. I'm a little late, but I feel like I should commemorate the anniversary here. I can't believe it's been 10 years.

An Amish Paradise

This, and other recent stories about the shooting of 5 Amish school girls in Pennsylvania, has led me to a deeper and deeper respect for their faith and way of life. I'll probably end up watching The Devil's Playground soon. But perhaps most of all, it's wonderful to see the comments people leave by these stories on Digg, and even the IMDB entry. "This is how Christianity should look."

They're right.

A New Discovery

I recently noticed something about myself that I never had before. It was a little like noticing for the first time that you tap your foot incessently while you work, only to find that your officemate has always, always known that about you. It's just a little quirk, but I'm surprised I wasn't consciously aware of it before.

I am constantly manipulating myself. What it breaks down to is that I know myself pretty well, and sometimes, I don't feel like doing things I want to do. So I trick myself into doing them anyway. For example: this new blog space.

Now, I know I've mentioned a few reasons: broken blog software, friends, and so on. But let's face it: I'm a UNIX admin and a programmer. Making computers work is what I do for fun, as well as work. My friends use aggregators, and if they don't, they're more than capable of clicking one extra link. I didn't move here for technical or social reasons: there are actually two real reasons why I moved to Blogger, and they're linked.

1) I hope that someday someone will read something I write and like it enough that a lot of people read it. I need to be honest, here. I'm a writer, and I want an audience. Getting a Digg's worth of hits would be a dream come true for me, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. (Okay, maybe a little. But anyway.) At that point, I don't want to be thinking about my home server's bandwidth and so on. I know I could handle it with some tweaking; I just don't want to think about it right now. I want to think about writing. If I started getting that kind of traffic regularly, though, I'd probably switch to my own software just so I could keep my self-respect. My inner geek is pretty laid-back, but he has his limits.

2) In order for #1 to occur, I have to actually start blogging again. And Blogger, like any new tech (well, new to me), is a toy. I know myself, and I know that I like playing with toys. When I wanted to make sure my foray into photography wasn't a one-time event, I got a midrange-professional camera, and now it's my main hobby, taking up far more time in my life than programming. I've had a show up here in MITRE's corporate gallery space. Make no mistake: I do this to myself because it works.

So see notice the pattern: I realize I'm not going to do the thing I want to do, so I utilize my intimate knowledge of myself to get myself to do it anyway. It's just like manipulating another person, but I'm doing it to myself. And my guess is that this isn't nearly so unusual as it seems at first. Think about it.

Dark Crystal Sequel Imminent

The Dark Crystal is going to have a sequel, written by the writer of the original, produced by Lisa Henson, and directed by the guy who did "Dexter's Laboratory","The Powerpuff Girls", "Samurai Jack" and "Clone Wars", and it's due out in 2008.

The Official Word on the Serenity Sequel

Joss actually posted something official, himself, in response to all the pandemonium about his "There is no Serenity sequel" comment. If you want to just read that, grep for "Holy Mother of Oats" to find his comment here.

Wiccan Veterans Denied Grave Symbols

If this is true, it needs to change. In pertinent part,

[Wicca] is recognised by the US military as an official religion but military veterans are not allowed to display the symbol on their graves.

"The federal government's discriminatory delay in approving these applications must end," said Daniel Mach, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

"There is no good reason to deny grieving families the solace and comfort available to military families of other religions," he said.

It would be a mistake on my part to immediately blame the Christian influence in the States as the sole cause for this "delay", though I did, at first. Wicca is a misunderstood religion, one which is portrayed in popular culture as almost wholly different from its existence in actual practice, and those popular representations are, in my experience, almost always negative (sort of like some other faiths I could mention). But it's true that Evangelical and conservative Christianity have a lot of sway in this country, and a lot of representation in the government. Anyway, Christians are probably the group I identify most with, and understand the best, out of all those represented in the US government today.

So, as a Christian, I want to go on record as being utterly opposed to preventing members of the Wiccan religion from displaying their symbol on their military grave stones, as represented in the above news piece. I'll be writing more broadly on this later, but as Christians, we're called first and foremost to love God and our neighbors (which Jesus clarified to mean, by paraphrase, "anybody we run across"*). If God is as great as we believe He is, we have to stop putting down people who believe differently from us, and let them make up their own minds based on the evidence. By putting up roadblocks of intolerance and injustice, we are not only opposing God ourselves, but preventing others from seeing that He might even be worth casually investigating. Christianity is about loving God, as simple as that, and nobody in the history of this world has ever been pressured into loving anybody, nor will they ever.

Just put yourself in their shoes for a second. Imagine if the majority culture and religion in the country you live in were different from, and opposed to, your own. Would you feel loved if it attempted to legislate that you receive unequal treatment?

And to Wiccans, I want to take this opportunity as a member of the worldwide Christian community to apologize, not just in this case as some of us may be involved, but for all of the injustice you have received at the hands of people who associate themselves with the name of Jesus. I recognize that I'm only one person, and that the discrimination and harassment you have received may far outweigh any impact my words might have. But as a Christian, I am truly sorry for the way Wiccans have been treated by some Christians, and even if it's only one apology by one of us, at least it's one. I have this forum, and I would be remiss if I didn't use it for this. I know others -- many others, in fact -- who feel the same way. I am truly sorry.



* Actually, I think He told the lawyer that he was asking the wrong question, and directed him toward action rather than looking for shortcuts. But the point still stands.

Third First Post!

Okay. Maybe I should mention in my personal blurb that I'm also a geek. I'm guessing that'll get out anyway.

This is the third major blog platform I've used as my primary. My most recent was at dais.aravir.net, part of my home site. But trackbacks didn't work correctly, and a lot of my bloggin' friends are on Blogger. As Bethany points out, Blogger seems to be the only place where people can post anonymously (and which still takes efforts to avoid spam).

I have pretty limited time just now, so let me just say that I intend this space to be for personal info (a detailed account of The Lawsuit will be forthcoming), and hopefully that will be at least equally balanced by discussions on the Christian faith and, increasingly, its interaction with American and world politics.

It all comes down to individuals, my friends, because that's all there is, in the end.