Every once in a while, I go searching
for pictures I'm interested in, and eventually I come across a site
called “Alamy”. I've often suspected that these people sell
pictures they have absolutely no right to. Fair disclosure: I hate
the website because they ruin the pictures with their “watermark”
and because they flood search engines, making it hard to find
alternative pics. Well, today, I found out I was right.
This is the alamy picture I stumbled
upon: They charge $19.99 for this photo for “personal use”, $49.99 to
use it on a website. I had already seen it here: And it's listed as public domain*, and available for download on
logging in.
Here's another picture I saw on Alamy
after first seeing it in the public domain*.
* The DVIDShub says in part, “In
general, DoD VI that are works of authorship prepared by U.S.
Government employees as part of their official duties are not
eligible for copyright protection in the United States...”
It also states, “No
Representations or Warranties. DoD makes no representations
or warranties of any kind regarding the suitability of using DoD VI
for non-DoD purposes. Use of DoD VI is at the user's sole risk.”
And “Publicity
and Privacy Rights. VI postings by the DoD do not waive any
publicity or privacy rights of any individuals portrayed. For
example, to display a photo of the Commandant of the Marine Corps on
the cover of a cereal box would likely violate his rights, not to
mention infringe USMC trademarks.”
And now I'm sorely tempted to report the website, but I don't know who to report them to.
Several days ago, I saw a sign at one of the protests that said we have to go beyond "Black Lives Matter", and it stuck with me. (Unfortunately, the location of the sign didn't so I can't give credit
where credit is due.)
Black lives do more than "just" matter. Black
lives have value, they have worth, they contribute to their communities.
Black lives are parents, husbands, wives, children, brothers and
sisters, aunts and uncles, and cousins. Many are several of those things at once. Black lives are loved by people. And, yes, black lives are friends and coworkers of mine. This is just a part of why black lives matter.
Some people have taken to saying, "All Lives Matter," and aside from the
fact that this is a further slap in the face to those black men and
women who are being killed, who are under attack, all lives don't seem to matter to these same people when little children are shot down in their schools. All lives didn't seem to matter when we thought the Coronavirus was only killing old people. All lives don't seem to matter as much as getting a haircut or refusing to wear a mask. And all lives don't seem to matter when a 75 year old white man is pushed down to the street during a protest march, or when a young woman is run down by a car. In fact, all lives only seem to matter when someone is trying to silence the people saying, "Black Lives Matter".
A note about the color: I hope the brown background is obvious, as is the black text. The rainbow colors are a nod back to 1968, when Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton used the rainbow as a symbol for multi-racial cooperation and unity. The gay community didn't adopt it until 1979, and it wasn't official as a "gay" symbol until 1994.
Until someone lays claim to the idea -- and I don't know that you can copyright an idea -- the image is free to use, by anyone, free of royalty or fee. I generated it using The Gimp image editing software.
This morning, I was greeted by a comment to a friend's Facebook post about the damage that's been done, seemingly to sully the name of the protests, in Minneapolis and elsewhere. The comment said, "We see you. Now, stop it." [emphasis removed]
Do we? Do we see them? Will police officers never again use excessive force on an unarmed black man? Will civilians, who are not police, never again go chasing after a black man because he "fits the description" of a "black man"? That's it, just black man. Will no police officer ever again break into the wrong apartment and shoot a woman for sitting in her own living room after midnight? Will people never again call the police because a black man told them to wear a mask, because a black man had a cell phone, or because a black family was having a barbecue at a park that featured barbecue stations?
While we're at it, have they released all those children from cages? Have they rescinded the order banning Muslim immigration? Have they done anything to ease the income disparities between minorities and "whites"?
Have they removed the Confederate statues from the South? Because, yes, those are offensive to people of Color. Have they stopped selling Confederate flags as at souvenir shops? And these are not just in the South, either; I saw an over-abundance of Confederate flags at a souvenir shop in Pennsylvania, a state that fought vigorously AGAINST slavery and to preserve the union.
It's not enough to say "We see you" or "We hear you," and we, as white people, certainly have a lot of gall telling persecuted blacks to "stop it". To truly see and hear the people who are protesting is to put an end not to the protests, but to the reasons for the protests.
The guy who said, “No, mail ballots,
they cheat, OK, people cheat. Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing
for this country because they are cheaters.” and “No, I think
mail in voting is a terrible thing, … I think if you vote, you
should go.” … has voted in New York in 2018 and in Florida in the
2020 primary, by absentee ballot.
With apologies to the people who own the pictures that I stole pieces from.
I really wanted to draw it freehand, but with everyone posting, "things to do while you're stuck at home," who has time to draw? Heck, I don't even have time to *do* the things to do while you're stuck at home because I'm too busy going through the posts.
Last month, I kept seeing this History (Channel) Magazine on the shelves about Al Capone and the American Mafia, and I kept thinking we would be better served if they did an exposé of the modern American Mafia. This is what the cover of that History (Channel) Magazine should have looked like:
These thoughts are currently incomplete. But I found this on my computer (from 6 years ago) and decided it was time to put these things out there. If I ever think of anything else, I'll have to add it at some point.
All across the Internet, I keep hearing the same complaints: that Congress isn't doing its job, that they're over-paid, that they under-work, that they're out of touch with people in the real world, *and* perhaps worst of all, that they have been bought and paid for by big business. So, if I had any power whatsoever, these are the laws I would pass to reform Congress:
I. Income Reform
1. The Congressional Pay Rate shall be permanently tied to the Minimum Wage, so that for every percentage point the Congressional Pay Rate is raised, the Minimum Wage will be raised by the same percentage. This will be retroactive to 1980, and Congress may resolve the current difference by either raising the Minimum Wage or by lowering the Congressional Pay Rate. Congress may still vote its own pay raises, but by doing so, it will raise the Minimum Wage accordingly.
2. Gifts from Lobbyists are to be limited to a nominal value equal to one hour of the Minimum Wage per recipient per day. Any gift from a Lobbyist that exceeds one hour of the Minimum Wage per recipient per day is to be considered a bribe. Any Lobbyist found to be bribing an elected official is subject to prosecution and any elected official accepting a bribe is subject to prosecution.
3. Members of Congress who perform work outside of their Congressional Duties for pay (writing a book, giving a speech, etc) will donate all proceeds from that work to paying down the National Debt. Congress was elected to govern the country, not line its own pockets.
4. The Congressional Recess (hereafter referred to as "vacation") shall be limited to four (4) weeks. This is a perfectly reasonable amount of time for grown, professional men and women to take vacation. Due to the fact that Congress needs to work together, all Congress People will take vacation simultaneously. The Congress shall determine which four weeks it is collectively on vacation prior to the start of each calendar year. When Congress is not on vacation, each Congress Person will be at work, in the Congressional Chambers for at least 3/5 (three fifths) of what is currently considered "full-time employment" (as of 2014, "full-time employment" is considered 36 - 40 hours per week not including meal times). Congress persons will not be eligible for overtime pay, however a Congress person not working full-time when not on vacation will be absent without pay.
II. Campaign Reform Rather than prohibit corporations from donating to candidates, and thereby buying those candidates' votes while in office, the following rules should be enforced.
1. There will be no campaign ads from any private organization. All campaign ads must come from the candidate. A campaign ad is to be defined as any publication, whether in paper, video, audio, or electronic form, designed to sway voters for or against one or more candidates for political office or political platforms or political stances. All campaign ads must identify the candidate being campaigned for.
2. Campaign ads must tell the truth. Any campaign running false campaign ads will forfeit their candidacy.
3. Campaign ads shall be funded through a collective fund. All donations for campaigns will go to this one fund and the money in that fund will be distributed to all candidates in proportion to the number of people the candidate is trying to reach. In this way, qualified candidates for President will not be eliminated from running just because they don't have multi-millionaires backing their campaigns.
4. The Primary Season will be eliminated. All primaries will be held on the same day, so that voters in New Jersey have the same choices available to them as voters in Iowa.
II.A. News Reform
1. News agencies must tell the truth. Any accidental inaccuracies must be published as soon as they are identified, and the identification of the inaccuracy is to be given the same weight as the initial inaccuracy. News agencies airing the views of political pundits are to identify false statements as false immediately. News agencies shall also identify the opinions of political pundits as opinions immediately.
Yesterday, I saw Avengers:
Endgame. I thought I'd put my thoughts here where I can
probably finagle some spoiler-font, and I'm going to discuss both
Infinity War and Endgame as if they were one movie released in two
parts, because they were. Fair warning: If you loved the movie and
don't want to hear anyone bad-mouthing it, you should probably leave
now. Because I didn't. I went in knowing I wouldn't, and the movie
didn't do enough to change that.
Okay, here goes: Spoilers
Ahoy!
These
were not good movies. Sorry, they weren't. And the problem stems from
Marvel, itself, which announced its continuing plans for their
Cinematic Universe long before Endgame came out. So we knew that when
Doctor Strange, Spider-man, The Scarlet Witch, Quill, Drax, Groot,
Mantis, Black Panther, The Winter Soldier, Falcon, The Wasp, the
original The Wasp, the original Ant-Man, and Nick
Fury and Maria Hill turned to dust and when the new Ant-Man was left
in the Quantum Realm, they were all going to come back. Because there
were going to be more Black Panther movies, more Spider-Man movies,
more Guardians of the Galaxy movies, more Doctor Strange movies, and
probably another Ant-Man movie. So the entire first movie was a cheap
stunt to guarantee an audience for the second movie.
And if half the population (presumably
of the universe, after all, Drax and Groot had never been to earth),
disappeared, why were so many of the Avengers and Avenger associates
destroyed? It sure seemed like of all the cast of all the MCU movies,
we were left with 5 Avengers, Ant-Man in quantum space, and a talking
racoon. And Nebula, who's still finding her inner anti-sociopath. It
defied all statistical logic. Then again, I suppose we should be glad
Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) made the cut, because otherwise,
Fury's last-ditch SOS would have gone to nobody.
Then there's the math. If Tony Stark
(played by Robert Downey Jr) was born in 1970, I was the Quarterback
for the Dallas Cowboys (also in 1970). Sorry, Robert. You had your
film debut in 1970. Admittedly, you were 5, but there's a big
difference between 0 and 5. Also in the same year that Captain America
and Iron Man went back to, Captain America gets to see Peggy Carter
(but not let her see him). On the up-side, it means the end where he
goes back to her in the late 1940s, that doesn't come out of the
blue. But if she's living the happy homemaker life in the 40s and
50s, did she come out of retirement to be at that military base in
1970? And only have aged about 5 years instead of 25? And I suppose
when 38-year-old Captain America (I'm being kind and ignoring the
fact that most of Endgame occurs 5 years from now) goes back to the
late 1940s, does he then jump back forward in time when he hits 75
(circa 1982 - 1987) so he can be 75 when he meets Sam Wilson (The
Falcon) again? Because otherwise, dude looks pretty good for 110
years old.
Final issue is the animal: I don't care
about the horrible storage unit that van was put into. Hell, maybe it
was an impound lot, although it looked a lot more like random storage
(no idea who would have been around to put it in storage since
apparently no one's collecting garbage anymore … not that anyone
used much over five years) … No, the problem is that this Quantum
Tunnel Controller that takes three nuclear physicists to operate to
send Scott into the Quantum Realm can be reactivated to bring Scott
back by an animal jumping on it and pressing some random button. I guess
it's a good thing the people who put that van into storage didn't try
to figure out what that machine did.
Ah, but there were some good moments.
Not good enough to make it a good movie, but they were good.
Apparently, after 22 movies in the
Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's now finally official! Steve Rogers,
aka Captain America is not a homophobe. That's right: when he's
running his support group for people who lost people in the purge, a
man tells them that he went out on a date – with another man. And
Steve isn't taken aback at all. Plus, we get our first gay character
in the MCU … for about 30 seconds. Out of 48 hours and 11 minutes
(including credits, because even though there were probably a lot of
gay people listed in the credits, we can't count them as movie
characters, and because I can't separate out the time of the credits
from the movie run times). So, not exactly a great moment, but a nice
little one. Emphasis on little.
There were actually a few nice moments
when people were brought back from the purge. No, Spider-Man and Iron
Man hugging while there was a war going on wasn't one of them. But
seeing Scarlet Witch come back, seeing the Ant Team come back, seeing
All of Wakanda come back were. Not quite sure how Doctor Strange
managed to get a message to all of those people that this was what
was going on in the 10 minutes or so between the finger snap and when
they appeared, but … it was off-camera, so I can't really complain
about how it happened.
Seeing The Women form a battle line to
protect little Spider-Man was nice, although I would have liked to
have seen Big And Powerful Captain Marvel actually whip Thanos' butt
instead of just knocking him down a couple times. Hell, a few of them
did *that*.
Finally, a question: Did they give
Black Widow blond hair for Infinity War just so she could have the
red hair with blond ends in the Five Years Later portions of Endgame?
I guess her hair dresser didn't make the purge.
I love to read. Or, rather, I used to love to read. As I got older, I got more and more frustrated by the heteronormative nature of mainstream books, and TV, and movies. This isn't really about that, though. It's just the introduction.
Because there is gay fiction out there. But, because there's a greater market for heterosexual fiction, the best writers, the best actors -- really, the best of everything -- they go to mainstream fiction. And we're left with slipshod work from people, some of whom have actual talent, but don't seem to be willing to work at it. And with the ease of self-publishing and vanity presses, it keeps getting worse.
So this is my first set of advice for writers. Whether you are writing straight fiction, gay fiction, trans fiction, science fiction, rom-coms, thrillers, whatever your genre, please consider the people you want to read or watch your work.
1. Proofread - For goodness sake, no one wants to pay $15 for a paperback novel where the words strung between two periods make no sense. Yes, when a book says, "Simon gazed deep Harry's eyes," we readers know that the characters aren't Simon and Deep Harry, but that's not our job. It's your job as a writer to write, "Simon gazed deeply into Harry's eyes."
1a. Know your grammar and spelling - This isn't a Facebook post. You are asking people to shell out their hard-earned money for your work. Know the difference between To, Too, and Two; There, Their, and They're; and all those fun grammar memes. And if you're going to use a word, know how to spell it and know what it means. Don't use "sentient" because you want a fancy word for "smart". That's not what it means. But if you do want to use "sentient," and it applies to the situation, please don't type "scentiant."
1b. The Oxford Comma - Honestly? It really doesn't matter. Read your sentence. If it makes sense, use it. If it doesn't, fix it. "We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin to the party" doesn't make sense. Neither does "We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin," or "We invited the strippers: JFK and Stalin." I DO NOT want to go to that party. You want to have a party? Invite your brother, your cousin, and your friends from work or school. Or invite your brother, your cousins and your friends from work or school. (See how with or without the Oxford Comma, that still makes sense? Of course, in this case, it's better with the comma because the comma separates the phrases, but leaving out the comma doesn't make it nonsense.) For breakfast this morning, I had a sandwich made from a waffle, egg, sausage and cheese. Yes, I do believe you can tell that I didn't have a sandwich made from a waffle, and then have egg, and then have sausage and cheese. I had all of those things in one sandwich. (It was GOOD!)
2. Descriptions - Some readers just read the words on the page and then turn the page when they get to the bottom, and on it goes. Others cast books using actors, other famous people, even people they know personally, to fill the various roles. For their sakes, please describe characters, and describe them early. I've read books where I had no idea whether a character was blond, brunette or red-head. In some cases, I'll just pick someone, and continue on. In others, I'll pick someone and then find out half-way through the book that the person I picked just is not right.
3. Be consistent - I'm currently reading a book, which I won't name, where two characters changed hair colors half way through. And they didn't go to a salon, or open a box of dye, the writer just apparently forgot what color their hair was and wrote a different word. To solve this, I keep a physical description of all of my major characters. But it's not just appearance. You're writing characters. This is a little trickier: a character can get upset with someone who lied to them and still lie themselves. But a character who was a lousy student probably should not suddenly be able to speak fluent French (for example) or know the chemical formula for Riboflavin. And a character who's left-handed shouldn't then sign his name with his right. If character number 2 picks something up, it should still be in character number 2's hand until you write in a change (he puts it down or she gives it to someone else), or there's a change of scene.
4. Names - Even if all of your friends' names start with the same letter, do not name your characters John, Jeff, Jack, Jay, Jim, Josh, and Jenny. Even if it makes sense that a couple would name their kids that way, it's confusing. And I imagine it will be confusing for you as a writer, as well. Please also consider that your reader may not know how to pronounce Schlaingelhiszczuk. I mean, sometimes you have to do it. Rumanian names are Rumanian, but use caution.
Okay, enough for now. These shouldn't even have to be said, not on a blog post, but my reading history tells me otherwise.
I invented all of the examples above, based on similar reading experiences.
The image contains actual text from a transcript of Donald Trump's statement on the Border Wall he made on board Air Force One, as reported by bloomberg.com. No, I don't know why there's a transcript of an "off the record" statement. But there is. He said it. Then again, I also don't know why the President of the United States would think a statement to reporters made on board Air Force One would be off the record.
Facebook really needs a rolling eyes emoji / emoticon, especially in these ... trying times. Since they don't have one, I -- well, I kind of swiped an eyes emoji and turned it into rolling eyes. I don't know how to get it submitted as a "sticker" or emoji on facebook ... yet, so I'm putting it here.
gif 1 was done without a background. You can see the one eye trailing. I don't actually like it, but there it is. :
gif 2 where each part of the animation has a white background, and you don't get the trailing :
---- Edited to add reasonable sized giff for Facebook comments:
Okay, here goes: I got into a discussion with two women last night about women's gymnastics and … it's just better that I move my thought processes to my page, because it really was off-topic of that post. Or rather, move it to my blog. Because it's gonna be a long ride.
My women friends understandably support women's gymnastics and are … I really don't want to put words in their mouths, but they're audibly happy that the ladies performed so well, and are miffed at the poor coverage. They believe the women deserve respect. As I said, this is understandable. Because they're right. Those gymnasts do deserve respect and aren't getting their due, and I should have left my comments to my own devices page and my own topic.
Because, meanwhile, I am perpetually miffed at the sexism in the sport, and rather pervy sexism at that, both from the standpoint that the men get insufficient coverage, and the standpoint that men's gymnastics emphasizes “power and strength” whereas women's emphasizes “agility and flexibility”. Or as I like to phrase it, men's gymnastics emphasizes athleticism where women's emphasizes pretty girls dancing.
Please bear in mind, I do not *want* it to be that way. I *see* it as that way. And don't make the mistake of thinking that women getting more coverage is “reverse sexism”. It's actually *not* (in my considered opinion) a victory for women that women's gymnastics gets more attention, but another example of the sexism in sports overall, where men still make all the rules, and men like to look at pretty pixies; where the men on Sports Illustrated are football, baseball, basketball and hockey players, and the women are swimsuit models. (Not all inclusive, and I'm getting off-track. Sorry.)
But enough of the hyperbole. Let's look at the differences between the men's and women's programs, starting with the superficial:
Men wear a sleeveless, satiny (but sometimes just stretch cotton) leotard, with separate pants, on rings, high bar, parallel bars and pommel horse, and they wear the leotard with baggy shorts (covering the pelvis) on the floor and vault. Women wear shiny, sequined leotards with sleeves, with as much of the pelvis and legs exposed as is legally possible.
Women are heavily made up. Men? No.
Men are on average aged 20 to 24. Women are on average aged 16 to 20. This is only because they've prohibited anyone who hasn't turned 15 by the start of the Olympic year from competing*. In 1996, Kerry Strugg was the old woman of that group at 20. This is why I referred to them as “girls” above. And I'm not alone. Although he seems entirely fine with it, American coach John Geddert said “Without sounding condescending to young women, this is a little girl’s sport,” to the Washington Post on November 9, 2012 (and we'll each decide for ourselves whether you're being condescending or not, thanks.) Of course, it wasn't always that way. In the 1950s and 1960s (I can't find records for an Individual All-Around before 1952), the female all-around champions were aged 30, 21, 25, 22, 26, and 20, in order.
* I keep seeing that the age limit was raised to 16 in 1997, but I also saw an article that claimed that all of this year's Chinese girls meet the age requirements, but that same article listed one of those girls as 15.
Oh, and this year's US men are aged 23 through 29.
Men compete on 6 apparatuses: floor, vault, high bar, parallel bars, still rings and pommel horse. Women compete in 4 apparatuses: floor, vault, uneven bars and balance beam. The vault is pretty much equivalent for both today, though they may do different vaults and only have to compete within their genders. Once upon a time, however, the men had to vault the length of the apparatus, the women vaulted the width (that's at least one improvement). On the floor, the men move from tumbling run to tumbling run, taking small, controlled step sequences between, except when they stop to either balance on one foot, do a handstand or do leg flairs on the floor;
the women make a tumbling move, then dance across the floor, then another tumbling move, then they preen and stick out their butts, et cetera.
Do women's gymnastics take athletic skill? Yes, absolutely and for sure. But it is hidden behind unnecessarily decorated with makeup and sequins and dance moves, which take away from that athletic skill. And the unfortunate fact that even though it takes an incredible amount of skill to jump from having one foot in front of the other on a four-inch wide beam and land in the exact same spot, it looks … kind of silly,
especially in the middle of a routine. And especially compared to the flairs on the pommel horse. Although, yeah, scissor kicks look pretty silly, too.
And when you compare gymnastics to other sports, the differences are glaring. Even though the costuming in women's volleyball is ridiculous, the sport is the same as for men. They may not compete against each other, except in equestrian (where let's give the horses the credit they're due) but Archery is Archery, Cycling is Cycling and Water Polo is Water Polo. (Although, I'm not quite sure why the women's cycling road course is so much shorter than the men's or the women swim 800 m when the men swim 1500.)
You can also contrast this to winter's figure skating, another heavily artistic sport, where, even though there certainly seem to be problems of sexism there (especially in the fondness for pixies), both the women and the men are required to show footwork as well as jumps. Mind you, I don't want to see the men dancing to the music and exaggeratedly sticking out their butts between tumbling runs. No, I'd like to see, and I think the sport would get more respect if, women's gymnastics rid itself of the prancing and preening. I'd also like to see collegiate women's gymnastics be the training ground for our Olympians that men's collegiate gymnastics now is, instead of the place Olympic girls go to retire.
I'd also like to see men's gymnastics get more air time, but that's a different topic.
We've all seen it: a movement comes up
trying to right a wrong, and then, once it's popular enough, the
counter-movement pops up. Once we saw enough blacklivesmatter
hashtags, we started seeing alllivesmatter. That one didn't take long
at all. We are seeing people asking, “When's heterosexual pride
month?” “When's white history month?” and the oh-so-popular
Men's Rights Movement, as if white, heterosexual males were somehow a
persecuted class in need of protection. (News flash: you're not.)
Now, my liberal friends are saying that
all of these counter-movements are an attempt to derail the progress
of civil rights and equality. And the originators of these
counter-movements may even be trying to do that, but the rank and
file are probably thinking, “No...” (more later on what the rank-and-file are thinking.)
What brought me to this conclusion was
a nearly random thought about the abysmal failure that is Title IX.
Title IX (“title nine”) is a law that was designed to offer
athletic opportunities to women in colleges and universities, but it
hasn't exactly turned out that way. What Title IX states is that, “No
person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded
from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to
discrimination under any education program or activity receiving
Federal financial assistance.” Laws being laws, there's probably
more to the law than that, but... How this reads to me is that
Federal funding of educational programs should be evenly distributed
between programs for men and programs for women, without regard to
co-ed activities. How it's actually been put into practice is that
colleges and universities that receive federal funding have to have
equal opportunities for men and for women. Which sounds great.
Football alone has 105 players allowed on NCAA rosters, and the major
teams do everything they can to fill all 105. After all, football is
a big money maker. That should be lots of opportunities for women.
But it's not. It seems to me that while Title IX demanded that
colleges provide equal opportunities, it didn't really do a lot to
fund those additional women's opportunities. So colleges still have
limited funding, even with a “big money maker”. So to fund those
105 women's opportunities, plus the numbers provided by basketball,
baseball and hockey, it seems they had to take the money from
somewhere. So they made cuts: men's gymnastics, men's wrestling,
men's rugby... Temple University recently cut the men's gymnastics
program because it couldn't fund itself, despite all the money that
comes from having a major NCAA Division I football team and
basketball team. And cutting these men's sports also served to reduce
the number of opportunities they had to provide to women. Look at all
the money they saved!
That leaves conservatives thinking
there are only so many opportunities to go around. So what are the
Rank and File thinking when they spread “alllivesmatter”? They're
probably thinking, “I need to protect what's mine, otherwise my job
/ rights / life will go the way of Temple Men's Gymnastics.” And
truth be told, they're not entirely wrong. In some cases they are –
entirely wrong, that is. We can fight for black lives without putting
white lives at risk. We can teach police departments how to resist
racism, and require background checks and psychological tests, and have them actually follow
proper take-down procedures, and get rid of that archaic “fraternity”
system where good cops cover for bad cops' bad behavior, without
letting real criminals get away, and without putting police lives at
risk. In fact, as the sniper in Dallas shows, digging heels in and
refusing to change the way police departments do business puts police
lives at risk. It puts the lives of good police at risk. In the same
way, recognizing a gay person's right to marry, right to be
considered next-of-kin to his or her significant other, right to hold
and keep a job, will not reduce a heterosexual's right to marry,
right to be considered next-of-kin to his or her SO, or right to hold
and keep a job.
So the question remains: who's starting
all of these counter-movements? Well, if we create opportunities for
non-privileged people (gays, women, blacks, latinx, transsexuals, …)
without reducing the opportunities for white heterosexual males, what
is the cost? Well, obviously initially, the cost is to business
owners. You know, the dreaded One Percent. Yep, them again. See,
creating a full-time, cost-of-living providing job costs money to a
company … until such time as that wage-earner starts spending that
money, and it all gets funneled back into the economy. But what costs
money to a company costs profit to the CEO and stock holders, and
despite the requirements of their jobs, they are apparently not
forward thinking. And they're certainly not in it for the good of the
economy at large.
In the beginning of June, a store (that shall remain nameless) started selling stretch bracelets out of a little box decorated in pride colors (the box was decorated), with the text "#loveislove" on the side of the box. And I thought, "Ooo. I should get one of those," partly for myself and partly to stand with Orlando. So I looked through and looked through, and not one of the bracelets had the beads in the right order. And some of them may have even missed a color or two entirely. (Once I saw that they weren't in the right order, I stopped paying that close attention.) I tried looking at local crafting stores, but while they sold some premade bracelets, none were in pride colors. I tried the nearest city's gay bookstore, but it's no longer the store it once was.
So I tried going to a local beading store. The woman there sat with me fishing through the morass of beads in three different bowls until we found enough beads in the six pride colors to make the bracelet pictured above.
It turned out so easy (though it was time consuming fishing for the right beads), and so affordable that I thought I'd check etsy to see whether anyone was already doing this. (I hadn't checked ahead of time because I didn't want to wait for delivery.) Unfortunately, a lot of people are already selling pride bracelets, some of which are very much like the one above. Hey, I never claimed it was all that original an idea.
I bought a new camera this past weekend. I had thought I was going to need over a thousand dollars to get a camera which could take really large-sized pictures at an eight-times optical zoom, but this thing has the 8x zoom, and the large picture size is 5152 x 3864, which is huge. So I bought it on Sunday morning, and to my delight, the thing came with a fully charged battery. Or maybe a mostly charged batter, because unfortunately, it only lasted 2 hours of a 6-hour event.
Anyway, here's the real problem: When I zoom to 100% magnification on the pictures I've taken, they look like an oil painting. Of course, I don't have a monitor with 5152 x 3864 pixels, but part of the point of that size is that I can leave space around the subject and then crop to my subject. And the old camera had some really good 100% magnification.
Here's an example of a picture taken with the new camera, cropped to 1024 x 800.
That doesn't look so bad, but when you click on the picture, you'll see what I'm talking about. Or you should.
I've chosen a comparable picture for comparison.
Here's that picture scaled down to 1208 x 800:
And the new camera's whole picture scaled down to 1067 x 800
(Why they have different ratios, I do not know. That stuff should be standard, so sez I.)
Now, here's the old camera, without scaling, cropped to 1208 x 800:
Mind you, the old camera doesn't have 5152 x 3864, so here's a picture from the new camera, scaled to
3008 x 2000, which is the highest pixel dimensions the old camera can do, and then cropped to 1067 x 800:
Note on the subject matter: I usually dislike posting photos of people without their permission(s). But when you're a college, or professional athlete, competing in an event in a large stadium, which is broadcast on national television, you don't have that same expectation of privacy as the guy who happens to be shopping at the local supermarket.
Note on the post format: I was originally going to put in a table of the photographs, with a row of new camera pictures and a row of old camera pictures and the columns being the full picture, a scaled picture and a cropped picture, or some such, but it doesn't seem like that would really elucidate anything.
It's that time of year again. In early
June, our church holds a baptism service, which means our pastor has
lost his ever-lovin' mind. Take this week's sermon title as an
example: he titled it “Baptism and Communion”, and in the 40
minute sermon, he spent 40 minutes talking about why everyone needs
to be baptized. See a problem there? Oh, sure, it was communion
Sunday. We have a communion Sunday every month (I think; my schedule
doesn't let me attend every month). But last month, they didn't title
the sermon “Share … and Communion” or the month before that
“Contagious Inviters … and Communion”, because they recognized
that Communion, while part of the service, was not part of the
sermon. But for some reason, this week they felt the needed to
include Communion in the sermon title, even though they wouldn't
actually be talking about it. Reminds me of last year, when he
actually raised the question, “Does a person need to be baptized to
be right with God?” and he would not answer the question. Hint: The
answer is no. But something about Baptism turns our pastor, who I otherwise genuinely like, into an
advertising guru, or possibly a grifter, shilling his shell game.
My pastor is not alone in this
phenomenon. A few years back, I was … not happy … with some
aspects of my church, including this attitude about baptism, so I
decided to look for another church. I went to church after church
after church in my area, and they all said the same thing: “You
need to be baptized. Oh, baptism isn't a requirement for salvation,
but you need to be baptized.” Really? Why? No one can actually give
a satisfactory answer for that. They just say, “It's a sign of
obedience.” But is it, really?
Churches, well, Protestant churches,
are fond of quoting The Great Commission: “Therefore, go and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19) Okay. I
actually believe the Bible. I believe that it's the Inspired Word of
God, and good for teaching, reproof, correction and training in
righteousness. (2 Timothy 3:16) What I don't believe is that God
requires us to climb into a pool of water and have someone shove our
heads under while that person recites the magic words (“I baptize
you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”).
One of the things
the pastor talked about during his sermon was what he called, “a
brief history lesson.” During Old Testament times, or The Days of
the Prophets for those who don't recognize two Testaments, in order
for a gentile to become a Jew, he would submit to circumcision, to
obedience to the law, to a sacrifice (probably of a bull, ram, lamb,
goat, doves, what have you), and to a ceremonial washing. Today, to
become a member of the Church, a lot of churches gloss over obedience
-- yes, they say you should be obedient, but they don't really talk much
about The Law, they no longer demand that a person not have committed adultery, or that the person not be divorced -- and they certainly don't demand an animal sacrifice
or circumcision. If those aren't necessary, why do they still insist on a ceremonial
washing?
I don't like literalism. I do, however, like understanding. The Greek word “βαπτίζοντες”
(past-participle of βαπτίζω)
means “to dip under, to immerse, to soak, to sink, to wash”. To a
literalist, that means to cover the person in water. Okay, you want
to be a literalist, then why would you say “In the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” instead of their actual
names, “I AM” (אֶהְיֶהor EHYEH or Yahweh), “Jesus” (ישוע
or Y'shua) and … well, I don't know the
Holy Spirit's name, but is that really why they don't use the others?
When we talk about how Jesus said, “Ask anything in my name...”
he didn't mean that saying “In Jesus' Name, amen” at the end of a
prayer will magically make it come true. He meant that if the prayer
is in accord with his name, with his identity, then God will do it
for you*. (This does not mean that only prayers God was going to do
anyway will come true, which would make prayer ... redundant.) Moreso, if you're going to be a literalist,
the Bible doesn't say, “Be baptized,” it says TO baptize. So the
impetus would then not be on the members of the congregation, or new
believers to submit to baptism, it would be on the pastors, teachers
and missionaries to baptize people. Maybe that's why they push it so
hard. Mind you, there are many, many reasons I don't like literalism.
Because, no, I do not
believe God has commanded missionaries to shove people under water
while spouting The Magic Words.
Jesus said a lot of things
while He was alive (one of which was not, “Always capitalize when
referring to me in the third person,” but I digress). He said, “You
must be born again.” He called himself a vine, a gate and a
shepherd. He called his followers sheep several times. None of these
were actually meant literally (and when He said, “sheep,” He did
it in love). No, you do not need to crawl back into your mother's womb
and come back out again to be a Christian. Many Christian faiths even
believe that when he said, “This is my body” and “This is my
blood,” he was not speaking literally, that he did not transform
crackers and grape alcohol into human DNA, while still standing in
front of his disciples.
So, maybe, just
maybe, when Jesus said, after his death, to “go and make disciples
of all the nations, βαπτίζοντες them in the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” what he meant was not, “go
and make disciples of all the nations, immersing them in water and
saying, 'in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit',”
but, “go and make disciples of all the nations, immersing them in
the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” immersing
them, not in water, but in the very identities of who the Father, the
Son and the Holy Spirit are (figuratively, the name). After all, it
seems to me that in Jesus' teaching, the state of a person's heart is
far more important than outward signs of religiosity.
So that's why I've made
the decision to not be baptized as an adult, not because I'm
unwilling to be obedient, but because my reading of the Bible tells
me that it's not an issue of obedience. I haven't done a search to
find whether this is a new idea or not, but I did go looking for a
church not that long ago, and couldn't find one that believed in the
Bible but didn't believe that baptism was necessary. So call me a
trendsetter, call me a trailblazer, hey, you can call me
irresponsible, since it doesn't matter what you call me. But
seriously, don't judge me. And don't judge others while you're at it.
If you want to hold a baptism service, you go ahead. If you want to
be baptized, you go ahead. And if I don't, then you might want to
consider that I'm not the one being disobedient or hard-hearted.
* This is not a guarantee. It's a truism. There are several reasons why God's answer to a prayer is or seems to be "no". Of course, most of those can probably be summed up by, "It's not in accordance with His identity, at least not right now."
