TechnoChitlins

From Confederate Yankee-

If I'm right, Israeli Air Force planes have been hitting Hamas fortifications filled with eager young terrorists who died waiting for an invasion that will never come. Hamas was suckered into putting their fighters in combat positions while the IAF simply waited for them to show up for their pre-planned bombing runs.

If Gazans weren't part of a genocide-mad death cult I might feel sorry for them, but then I remember that these same terrorists purposefully target Israeli civilians, and that even their kids dance in the streets when Israeli woman and children are killed by Hamas rockets, and I don't feel too bad, at all.

I don't feel sorry for them at all- they are like a mad death cult that the other Arabs use to pound Israel. They're a total waste of humanity and deserve much more than they are getting.

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

via the whole dang intarweb

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Consider-

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

via American Digest

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Wow, Gerard. Just wow.

In 5 B.C. "travel" was not something undertaken lightly. It involved, across distances that would seem trivial today, risks of life and death at every turn. It required wealth and endurance. Few traveled for pleasure. To travel at all required a motivation far beyond the ordinary. So, at the very least, while we cannot know what was in the sky in those days, we can be certain it was something very unusual.

In his short story, "The Star," Arthur C. Clarke's Jesuit narrator of the far future discovers the remnants of a civilization destroyed by a violent nova so that its light might announce the birth of Christ on Earth. The story has that ironic twist that is popular with authors and pleasing to readers. I remember it as making an impression on me when I was around 12 years old. But the story does not age well because the science of it, like all science, does not age well. The story is just 53 years old.

In 1957, when I was twelve years old, we all lived in a far smaller universe with far fewer stars for God to destroy by way of cosmic birth announcements. Now that the inventory of His stars has increased a billion fold, I think it is safe to say He could have found one to suit His purpose that didn't involve destroying a blameless alien race. He could simply pick one deeper in the field and, well, ramp up the volume. That sort of thing is just an afterthought once You've got omnipotence. It might even do double duty if You could use a star in an area that might need a few more heavy elements across the next brief one or two billion years of Your plan.

Sages and mystics, Eliot and Clarke, and a host of others have all had their turns with the story of The Star. In the end it remains what it was when it began, a story. The story of a road trip by three astrologers, kings, wise men. A journey by men who saw something special in the heavens and determined to follow it wherever it led, no matter what the cost.

I can't imagine what would keep you from it- Read It All.

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 09:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a post at The Doctor is In, the good doctor muses on how our culture has become less compassionate:

The nurse — young, competent, smart, hard-working, the very best of the modern nursing profession — apprises me of his situation, closing with this knockout punch: "You know, we just passed that initiative — you know, the suicide one. He'd be an excellent candidate."

She wasn't joking.

Taken a bit off guard, I responded that it is most unwise to give physicians the power to kill you, for we will become very good at it, and impossible to stop once we are.

She continued: "No, I would love to work for a Dr. Kevorkian. Be an Angel of Death, you know?"

"I know", I muttered under my breath, as she ran off to another bedside, competently and with great efficiency, to adjust some ventilator or fine-tune some dopamine drip. And hopefully do nothing more.

These vignettes in modern medicine are really not about medicine at all. They are in truth about a culture which has lost its compassion. Our calloused and cynical society has become a raging river fed by a thousand foul and fetid streams. We have, by turns, taught our children that ethics are situational and values neutral; taught our women that compassion and service are signs of weakness, that they must become hard and heartless like the men they hate; taught our men that success and the respect of others comes not through character and integrity but through callousness, cynicism, and greed; and taught ourselves that we are a law unto ourselves, the sole and final arbiter of what is right and what is good.

We have, in our post-modern and post-Christian culture, inexorably and irrevocably turned from our roots in Christian morality and worldview, which was the foundation and font of that which we now know — or used to know — as Western Civilization. Yes, we have preserved the tinsel and the trappings, the gilded and glittering exterior of a decaying sarcophagus, where we speak self-righteously of rights while denying their origin in the divine spark within the human spirit, made in the image of God; where we bray about liberty, but are enslaved to its bejeweled impostor, the damsel of decadence and libertinism; where compassion is naught but another government program to address the consequences of our own aberrant and irresponsible behavior, duly justified, rationalized, and denied. Others must pay so that I may play, you know.

It doesn't matter that much how we got here- we could spend post after post on that topic- but the fact is we're becoming a hard, uncaring society just at a time where kindness and compassion are most needed. Where will this lead?

I don't like it but feel powerless in the face of it.

Sorry for no direct link- my rotten corporate firewall won't allow it. Go to here and scroll to the post "Revolution of the soul".

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Daphne states what should be obvious and what many are thinking but are, face it, afraid to say.

Watching the latest Islamic terrorist horror in India starts a rolling list in my head that can't be stopped; Iran, Beirut, USS Cole, Somalia, 9/11, Spain, London. Those are just the big ones, everyday around the world Islamists murder in the name of their politicized religion. They attack women, children, the old and infirm, coreligionists, non-believers, white, brown or yellow, it doesn't matter. An alarming portion of their fellow Muslims support their grisly agenda, some of them actively, others by dancing in the streets, expressing joy in the deaths of strangers. I hate these bastards.

...

I don't believe Mohamed was holy or a prophet. I think he was evil incarnate carrying the words of Satan himself to a crew of desert simpletons. Islam is a barbaric, unpeaceful, vile, unthinking distortion of worship. The fact that the majority of its adherents can't even read the Koran smacks of mindless ignorance. I see no enlightenment elevating individual singularity or acknowledging gifted greatness in this corner of archaic darkness. My lip curls at their love of theocracies, a willingness to subjugate themselves to the whims of dissolute rulers along side an ancient text they can't even begin to comprehend, subsuming their divine individuality to a tide of dogmatic mandates. I have no use, or respect, for the people who follow this religion. I'm past tired of their bombing, shooting, acid throwing, coup d'etat loving, rioting asses and it looks like the rest of the world could stand a break from these murdering bastards, too. According to a website that does nothing but track worldwide Islamic terrorism, there have been 12,328 Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11. Don't tell me this isn't an Islamic issue, the rest of us aren't practicing murder on a worldwide scale in the name of religion.

I'm fed up. Please don't start feeding me that lame 'Moderate Islam' load of bull. Sure, I know most Muslims aren't carrying out jihad, many don't financially support those activities, millions don't dance in the streets and rejoice death. Answer me this though, of all of those billions who don't participate, how many are actively fighting the Islamists?

What she said. When are we going to wake up? They HATE our civilization, they HATE our race, and want us all to die painfully. Their torture of the Jews this weekend in Mumbai was unspeakable. I for one refuse to think that they are somehow our moral equal- they are savages pure and simple, and extermination is too kind a fate for them.

via Gerard

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)