The House of David

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Christianity will not do

The Reaction's main critique against modern culture is that modern culture is a false doctrine, and an unhealthy one that cannot be sustained. Progressivism, toward which modern culture aspires, is communist and equalitarian. Against that, the Reaction prescribes "Christianity".

But the parts of Christianity which are Reactionary - and proven to work - rely upon false documents, like Ephesians. The true documents, like Galatians and the Synoptics, recommend ... communism and equality.

Christianity must lie to itself in order to survive.

posted by Zimri on 20:35 | link | 0 comments

Jim on the New Testament

Okay, Jim the Blogger wrote this in a comment:

You also won’t discuss whether your pastor thinks the New Testament was written early (before the execution of James, brother of Jesus) or late (after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple)
The historical evidence that the New Testament was written early is fairly compelling. The major reason for someone to believe it was written late is because he wants to have the excuse that it is all myth so that he can ignore the bits that are now inconvenient – which strategy leads to progressive approved, or at least progressive tolerated, but rapidly emptying, churches.

I will interject here that, in this context - Christian support of patriarchy - he is narrowly speaking of the Pauline [pseud]epigraphs like Titus, 1-2 Timothy, and Ephesians. The evidence that these are genuinely Pauline is not "compelling". Stylistically they are different from the genuine epistles, and the Pastorals especially are stuffed with anachronisms.

And Jim is imputing motives. For any given writing, The major reason for someone to believe it was written late is because that someone accepts such scholars as have proven, to the best of his understanding, that it was written late.

I don't like this tactic of imputing motives, to say that the reason someone doubts the religion is because he is a dissolute and evil person (Jim would say, a "progressive"). That tactic is, itself, not a nice thing to do; Jim would not like it if the tactic were turned upon him. And, to the extent Jim has his own biases and motives, he actually deserves it.

posted by Zimri on 20:26 | link | 0 comments

William Saletan wants you to admire him

Saletan endorses Ryan someday. And here's Stephen Price Blair's summation: [expletive], some people are always happy to vote for Republicans in every election except the current one.

I recall in 2004, Saletan ran the same shtick when he claimed to agree with Schwarzenegger's convention speech. Arnold's a fiscal conservative? Gosh darn it, I'm a fiscal conservative too! I would love to vote for the Republicans, but [some lame excuse to why he votes for the Marxist instead] so I must vote for the Marxist instead.

Which isn't to say Saletan's entirely wrong about the GOP being, in the main, feckless; nor about the Tea Party having some underinformed ideologues in it. But if that's his complaint, he should hardly be looking to the Democrats as being responsible nor to freakin' ACORN being a bastion of freethinking philosophers. If that's his complaint then he should ignore both parties and choose the best of the four candidates; which, as he's proven, is Ryan.

Saletan hasn't nearly the credibility outside his bubble that he thinks he has. Eight years, it's been since his wankery in 2004. And still - still - he ignores what he knows and publicly admits to be true.

This is TL'DR. Short version: posturing poseur poses and postures. Not. News.

posted by Zimri on 20:04 | link | 0 comments

Upload #61: restoring the vow

So, "The Covenant of Those Given the Book" is back.

I'd pulled it out last month along with certain others. It was pretty slapdash when I posted it; this was toward the end of that "sprint".

Anyway, now it stands on its own a little better, not relying so much on what I'd said of "sura 4's sources". It's best read as a hint that sura 33 is late, so it does at least assume that new one "The Scriptures of the Women".

Madrassa.

posted by Zimri on 19:40 | link | 0 comments

Honor killings and taqiyya

I see a lot of comments from the anti-Islam set that attack Islam based on "honor killings".

An "honor killing" is a punishment a relative metes out to the miscreant, solely to repair the family name. This is a form of lynch law. It does not have anything to do with any formal legal system. Every major school of Islam incorporates, or is, a legal system; Shi'a and Ibadi by practice and Sunnis by their very definition. Ergo, an honor killing cannot be Islamic.

QED.

There are other forms of justice in Islam that have a similar effect, though.

Islam prescribes death (by beheading) for apostasy. This law cannot be enforced in non-Islamic countries. So what tends to happen is that the Imam lets it be known that the apostate is an apostate, at which point the family kills him or her. Then the Imam sorrowfully tells the press that this was an "honor killing" that had nothing to do with Islam. In fact, I submit, this was not an honor killing; it was an execution carried out in defiance of kafir law, but not God's law.

posted by Zimri on 18:12 | link | 0 comments

Wireless unplugged

So this morning I put my wifi into "airplane mode" - and could not enable it again.

As to how I did this horrible thing: I was locked out of wifi, other people said they could use wifi, so I pushed the wifi button hoping it would "recycle".

Oops. This is a known problem. I guess it's come to the forefront now that Fedora actually touches that stuff . . .

The Network > Wireless switch cannot be pulled back to "on". There's no option in the Terminal even as root; no iwlist, and modprobe does jack. There's no option on rebooting and doing recovery mode. There's no option in freakin' GRUB. I'm guessing this is because, as others have seen on their machines, that the wifi button is hooked right into the BIOS.

So, reboot, push F10 and you get the BIOS menu - a very text-like thingy. Restoring everything to factory settings via Load Setup Defaults. Nope.

UPDATE: Looks like I'm not getting anywhere without an install of rfkill. Okay. I'd love to do that. So, off to download rfkill here, stick it on USB, go install it on the laptop...

But the readme in this "rfkill-0.4" tarball I unpacked says "To build rfkill, just enter 'make'. Ah but there is no such command. Which means I need the C compiler (GCC?).

"Simply do X", I hate manuals that do that. "I'm not only going to ask you to do something I have no right to assume that you are able to do, but I'm going to assume you are a sub-simpleton if you can't."

UPDATE 4:11 PM: yeah, fuck that shit. I installed rfkill-0.4-5.fc17.i686.rpm.

So, now I know: I'm hardblocked on not just one, but TWO wifi outlets, hp-wifi and phy0. So if I push the button, I can get the hardblock off of hp-wifi but not phy0. That reminded me of this guy's Acer woes. Also I found this.

UPDATE 4:22 PM: BOO YAH all I had to do was to rfkill unblock all. I didn't have to go through the hoops those last two guys went through.

My GOD what a pain in the colon. Fedora need to inline a proper utility for this rfkill nonsense. Still Not Ready For Prime Time.

posted by Zimri on 15:29 | link | 0 comments

The Darwinist heresy

In this Lamarck / Darwin question, Creationist thought on Darwin(ism) is a special case.

Creationists recognise Common Descent as a contradiction against the doctrine that man is the reflection of God on Earth. Yet they have swallowed the Progressive line that it was Darwin, and not Lamarck, most responsible for Common Descent. Thus: it's not evolution they (claim to) attack, but "Darwinism".

This gives the creationists the means to drive a wedge between Darwin and his theory. One line of attack is to go after Darwin's racial comments - which is where Lamarck and Darwin blend.

I don't think this is because the creationists are any less racist than the Darwinists. I think it's more because Darwin showed the mechanism by which Common Descent could create the chimps in one place and pre-Neanderthal men in the other. It's because Darwin destroyed creationism; yelling "racist" is all the creationists have left.

posted by Zimri on 13:10 | link | 0 comments

Natural selection

Jim is talking about Lamarck and Darwin again.

Jim claims that mainstream academia has been lying about Lamarck since 1972. Lamarck taught Common Descent: for humans, this means that we and chimpanzees share a common ancestor, brothers to the gorilla. Since 1972, Common Descent has been associated instead with Charles Darwin. Darwin's actual teachings were about Natural Selection. That much, says Jim, academia has downplayed. Jim has the motive, too: Darwin's theory implies (situational and biological) superiority and inferiority between subspecies of any given genus - and when one applies this to humanity . . .

I have to assume that Jim is correct about the change in 1972. I haven't checked. But also, anyone serious about Darwin knows about Natural Selection.

Progressives have been attacking their enemies as "social Darwinists" from the start. This label may even be fair when pinned upon libertarians.

In popular culture, the Darwin Awards are not the awards for the most chimp-like human; they are the awards for humans who exit the gene pool.

So, anyway. Back to the Leftists. I agree that the Left has had an interest in "exonerating Darwin for his sin", which sin is laying the ground for racism. But I'm not sure how well their scheme has worked. Darwin is still a Darwinist.

posted by Zimri on 12:58 | link | 0 comments

Friday, August 10, 2012

Xatrya against Vaisya

The US military is wargaming against the US proletariat. But... why's this a surprise?

I've defined the Xatrya / Spartiates as America's warrior caste. I've dealt with them here, here, here and here and there elsewhere.

In brief: This is John McCain's caste. Should, G-d forbid, the SHF - don't count on the Armed Forces to side with the citizenry. As this exercise proves, the Armed Forces will side with "the Constitution" which, in practice, means with Chief Justice John Roberts.

posted by Zimri on 18:13 | link | 0 comments

Yeesh, that's a lot of green

RedState has posted about a real Obama scandal - green energy.

Back in March and early April I was on a job-hunt. On 20 March, a tech recruiter was going to direct me to Tendril, a "smart grid" / green-energy outfit in Boulder (of course). Then I sent Tendril the following, and forwarded it back to the recruiter.

I'm feeling more sure of myself these days - so, I'll post this here. I already posted it at Ace's.

Dear sirs / madams:

I was informed about opportunities here in a phone call. I googled into this company, and I found the TendrilInc.com site. I have some concerns.

There was a Consumer Engagement section, and it contained this: "Saving 12 cents on your monthly utility bill by installing CFLs isn’t as exciting as knowing that your efforts helped light the top floor of the Empire State Building for an hour."

First, I do not care that I lit the top floor of some building far from here for an hour. More to the point, CFL bulbs are an environmental horror. Sure, it saves "energy" - which energy could be a lot cheaper if we had more power plants, especially nuclear plants - but at the cost of introducing toxic metals into our homes and landfills, in this case mercury.

The environment doesn't seem to be a concern at Tendril. So what *is* the concern?

I hear from the news daily of some "green" boondoggle from the US government, which then fails, leaving stockholders hanging and the taxpayers footing the bill. Solyndra. GE. The Chevy Volt. Beacon Power. Ener1.

And now, there's the "smart grid". I've heard scary things about that, too. Who monitors the grid? Would some people get monitored more than others?

I'll be blunt. Are you serving consumers and stockholders? or are you serving political masters in DC?

[my real name]

PS. Lose the CFL stuff, and endorse nuclear power; and we'll be able to talk.

Surprisingly, I was not contacted about this opportunity afterward . . .

posted by Zimri on 17:23 | link | 0 comments