Sunday, August 24, 2003

Speaking of Perfidy…

Partisan Politics

Various news sources have noted that we could have had power grid reform in motion TWO YEARS ago if the President and some members of Congress wouldn’t insist on including Alaskan drilling priveliges in the same bill.

Alaskan drilling has been repeatedly rejected for the time being. Yet, in his effort to get a pet project through Congress, the Administration, like all the ones before it, are willing to hold up urgent and necessary changes.

Thanks, guys. Way to go.


Posted by Johno on 08/24/03 at 03:41 PM
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Rebrandinating

Perfidy

A statement from Minister Pythagosaurus:

As a veteran of a hundred failed marketing campaigns, I know that it’s important to establish a brand and stick with it if you want to have a prayer of succeeding. People need to recognize your name and learn to trust it.

Firmly casting aside those hard-earned lessons, I am discarding the no-longer-helpful “Pythagosaurus” moniker as I discarded the “Johnny Two-Cents” moniker some months ago. Though both have served a purpose, neither is mellifluous enough, or short enough, to suit my needs.

Therefore, from here forward, I shall be simply known as “Johno” or, if you wish, “Minister Johno The Aggravatingly Indecisive.” Whichever you prefer. End transmission.

The Ministry supports Minister Johno in his decision, and is pleased. We extend our best wishes to him and his family, whom the Ministry shall be releasing to his custody forthwith.

All hail Minister Johno, master of the pithy metaphor!


Posted by Ministry on 08/24/03 at 03:01 PM
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Blog Beauty Contest

Perfidy

In our continued efforts to expand our readership, we have done things of questionable morality.  And certainly of questionable taste.  Given that we at the Ministry believe that the ends not only justify, but in fact require the means, we have registered for N. Z. Bear’s Blog Beauty Contest. 

One of the rules of the Beauty contest requires that we link to three of the other contestants.  Therefore, following is our links, and the reasons we admit to linking them:

  • Stylishcarp is from Jefferson Parish, LA.  His blog includes this, which we found memorable:

    SHERIFF
    HARRY
    LEE’S

    16th Annual
    Chinese, Cajun,
    Cowboy
    Fais-Do-Do

  • Don’t be a hero talks about Chinese astronauts and doesn’t call them Chinkonauts, for which we admire her.

  • My Completely Random Life talks about the culture wars, and asks this important question:  Which band has had more cultural impact: Nirvana or New Kids on the Block?  In context, it’s more interesting than it sounds. 

So there you have it.  Now vote for us by giving us links!

[Update] Just to be clear, this blog has been in existence since July tenth.  Archives prior to that date are from Johnny Two-Cents, which is now defunct.


Posted by Ministry on 08/24/03 at 08:00 AM
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In a handbasket

It'll Be a Cold Day in Hell

Just took the Dante’s Inferno test, and apparently I am banished to the 2nd level of hell.  I thought for sure I would end up in the third, but I guess you really never do know.

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

LevelScore
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)Low
Level 7 (Violent)High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)Low

Take the Dante’s Divine Comedy Inferno Test

Interestingly, the score for the test don’t match up with Dante’s conception of the relative severity of the different categories of sin.  I can see how a modern test designer would de-emphasize the damnative power of heretical thinking - but treachery, surely, is still serious.  It would be interesting to see a test that more closely matches Dante’s vision.  Could even be useful…


Posted by Buckethead on 08/24/03 at 04:13 AM
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Saturday, August 23, 2003

Simon takes a hit for the team

Partisan Politics

CNN is reporting that Gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon has dropped out of the California race.  Though support for the recall has diminished somewhat, this will certainly increase Arnold’s chances of taking the race.  It will also increase the chances that racist Cruz Bustamante will not win.  Cruz was caught saying the “N” word (nigger) at a political gathering not too far back, and has connections with MEChA, the racist Mexican group.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/23/03 at 10:23 PM
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Friday, August 22, 2003

Rock Over London, Rock on Chicago, Wesley Willis R.I.P.

Just So You Know

I see via fark that America’s greatest paranoid schitzophrenic non-jazz musician Wesley Willis, has died.

I remember the first time I heard “Rock and Roll McDonald’s.” It was an epiphanic experience. Long may he rock.

Be a Pepper. Drink Dr. Pepper.


Posted by Johno on 08/22/03 at 07:30 PM
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On Blue Screens of Death

Just So You Know

In the wake of all the Windows computer viruses around this week, I have a question.

Recently, the news, and therefore the public, are starting to catch on to the fact that these viruses that go around are WINDOWS viruses, and sometime soon people are going to start casually looking around for something else. What viable, practical, convenient alternatives exist for the home computer user (e.g., me) who doesn’t want to use Windows as their primary OS? Given the state of affairs as they are now, who is prepared to receive these legions of marginally competent casual users with open arms? I don’t know the answer to this question, and it kind of pisses me off. Anybody out there have an idea?

And don’t say:

  • Mac. I don’t have two grand.
  • Linux. Be serious. See below.

Posted by Johno on 08/22/03 at 05:10 PM
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Chinese in space!

That Buck Rogers Stuff

According to spacedaily.com, the Chinese could become the third nation with a manned space program as earlier as October 10th of this year.  The Shenzhou-5 could carry two, but more likely one Chinkonaut into orbit.  The mission could be as long as a week, which would be far longer than the first orbital missions of the USSR and America, each of which lasted only hours.

Maybe, maybe, this will light a fire under someone’s ass.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/22/03 at 05:02 PM
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A post not about religion

Entertainment

...well, that’s not exactly true.

Congratulations to the Saugus, MA little league team, who have made it to the US Championship game in the Little League World Series.

Despite the perhaps-deserved long-view theorizing and cranky little-league bashing that one hears, it’s awesome, just awesome, to see a bunch of kids from up the road play so well under so much pressure. The crying, joyous parents is just icing on the cake.

Good luck, kids. (I’d like to say,) If you win the series, dinner’s on me at Kowloon out on Route 1*, (but I can’t.)

*Disclaimer. If you win the series, dinner is NOT on me, but I’ll sure be happy for you. 


Posted by Johno on 08/22/03 at 05:02 PM
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The Virtue of Hate

It'll Be a Cold Day in Hell

By way of Winds of Change comes this fascinating First Things article by Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/22/03 at 04:07 PM
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On Establishment

Just So You Know

At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick weighs in on the Establishment Clause. Interestingly, she comes to the same basic conclusions as Buckethead, though from a different line of argument and with a different conclusion.


Posted by Johno on 08/22/03 at 03:43 PM
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The argument goes on…

Perfidy Responds

My defense of the TC was part of my view that there is a larger animus against Christianity.  Which is why I mentioned the Catholic issue with the federal judicial appointments.  The left likes to think that those with religious beliefs, sincerely held, are the far right wing.  They are not, not by far. 

In the comments to a prior post, Bridgit said this case involved one “southern white protestant” view.  That is disingenuous, because how many black southern protestants, or Korean DC area protestants, or Martian Jews for that matter would agree with the views expressed by the TC?  Again, this is (a very mild version of) the contempt that is generally cast on Christianity.  Christianity is not the quaint and curious folk ways of backwoods crackers. 

The Judicial appointments debate involved a Roman Catholic view under the microscope, but I think that the motivations were similar.  The left would not merely like to exclude religion from the public arena, they have it in for Christianity and pretty much everything traditional.  Everytime some 99.44% Christian community somewhere in the midwest puts up a nativity scene, someone, of a certain political group, sues the city.  Kwanzaa decorations and the whole panarama of other faith’s symbols do not get the same attention.

Now, I am a conservative.  Not in the European sense, which is reactionary and monarchist, etc.  I love and look forward to technological change.  I feel that reform is possible, and given sufficient forethought, desirable.  The beliefs that I feel are worthy of conserving are the revolutionary ideals of the founding generation, as amended by the Union’s position in the civil war.  But there are other things worthy of conserving.  We should not throw out religion because a small fraction of our population is anticlerical, and feels that Christianity is the opiate of the masses, ie, the stupid.

The founding fathers felt that religion was essential for the survival of the republic.  They were right about so many things that I am wary of saying, “Oh they were just kidding about that one.” Whitaker Chambers (and for that matter Solzhenitsyn) felt that religion was in opposition to modernity.  They felt that Communism (which I think we can all agree was very, very bad) was not something different from the liberal west, but rather the purification of it, the assumptions of modernity taken to their logical extremes.  Chambers feared that the liberal west would lose to the powerful faith of Communism, or that it would lose its soul in the process of winning.

We should not be so quick to exclude religion from the public arena.  Tolerance does not require that we banish all representations of the majority faith of this nation.  It should not require the cultural cover of a picture of Confucius to have a picture of Moses.  The founders feared the tyranny of the majority, and guarded against it.  But Toqueville was right to fear the tyranny of the minority.  And that is what I see growing in this country. 


Posted by Buckethead on 08/22/03 at 03:11 PM
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Powered exoskeletons for grandma

Holy Shit!

Somehow, I imagined that our cybernetic future wouldn’t begin with powered armor for the elderly. 


Posted by Buckethead on 08/22/03 at 02:19 PM
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Unfortunate Bedfellows

Lead Pipe Cruelty

My position against Alabama Chief Justice Moore unfortunately means that I am ostensibly in the same camp with dookie derby John Kelso of the Austin-American Statesman.

Buckethead has discussed the rube-factor in the current round of discussions on Alabama, writing “that this is happening in Alabama merely gives people an extra frisson of joy, because they can safely conflate religion with backwardness. It’s Alabama, right?” Kelso adds weight to Buckethead’s point by publishing a set of sub-Foxworthy, totally unfunny, “Alabama Commandments.” G’hyuk!

When I said earlier that fat people and Catholics may be the last two acceptable bigotries in “polite” America, I forgot to include hicks, also encompassing the subclasses hillbillies, rednecks, trailer-trash, and briar-hoppers. So there are really THREE acceptable bigotries. As a sop to Buckethead, you may also include Norwegians for a total of four. (I mean, seriously, “trailer trash?” You hear “trailer park” used as code for poor and white the way you often hear “inner city” used as code for poor and black.)

If Kelso and I are in fact in the same camp opposing Judge Moore, this born and bred Ohio briar-hopper and damn proud of it is gonna walk right over and pee on his campfire. Read on to see why.


Posted by Johno on 08/22/03 at 01:49 PM
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On my own here

Just So You Know

Skipping through the blogosphere, I see that I am nearly alone in defending the ten commandments in Alabama.  Which I find odd, given that I am not particularly religious.  It just seems to me that Christianity is given little respect from the left, and from the chattering classes.  Whenever the faith dares poke its head above ground, it is roundly condemned for the Inquisition, the crusades, being pro-life, out of step with the modern world, or having members who are intolerant superstitious rubes. 


Posted by Buckethead on 08/22/03 at 01:20 AM
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