Good Morning!
Happy Saturday!
Quote of the Day
“I am persuaded that in the case of elected officials, the overwhelming temptation is to conclude that it is more important for your constituents that you be reelected than that you deal honestly with them.”
James L. Buckley
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Who has a QoD for us?
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Wandering Views 
Good morning! Been a while since I was first! 🙂
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Nice video…what a rich voice he has.
Today is my half-birthday. 50 1/2. 🙂 For a while in our family, we would celebrate birthdays and half-birthdays. We’d have cake every time a birthday or half-birthday would come along. That got to be a lot of celebrations in a year with eight of us. 🙂 (We only bought gifts for the full birthdays, though, or it could have also become a rather expensive tradition, too!)
I’m not sure why we stopped celebrating half-birthdays; just got too busy and didn’t always think of it, I guess.
QoD: Do you have any out-of-the-ordinary celebrations you enjoy in your family or with others?
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Oh, and on the half-birthdays we’d sing:
“Halfy birthday to you…”
We’re kind of a strange lot. 😉
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Just think, if I celebrated half birthdays, I could have had 165 parties. With presents?
I can only remember one birthday present I ever got. For my 25th, all my friends got together and bought me a car battery. They got tired of pushing my car to start it.
Chuck, when he was about nine, tried to give me a kitten for a present. I made him take it back. It broke my heart to do that. But I couldn’t take a cat. It still bothers me when I think of it.
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Good morning! We are fortunate if any of us remember to celebrate any occasions. Today is our anniversary and I suppose we will celebrate by working…it is the tax season. My husband’s birthday is on Monday so we are checking out the birthday tree I planted many years ago in honor of the occasion and him. With two good weather days all the buds should be blooming for his special day. It is a tulip magnolia. The tree blooms first and then the leaves come out afterward so it is beautiful.
Our son graduates in May. Does anyone have suggestions for a celebration or gifts? We are a small family with a tight budget.
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Chas, that is so sad about the kitten. 😦
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Good morning. Thanks for putting up with me for another week. It was interesting to me to learn that there are now “death cafes” springing up all around the country. I am working with the author of THE AMATEUR’S GUIDE TO DEATH AND DYING who does seminars on preparing for death. Just thought I would start the morning off with a cheerful thought. Perhaps you will be in Heaven soon enough. Who knows?
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While my memory grows less and less able to remember anything, my passwords now grow so long and complicated they resemble the Bible or the works of Shakespeare in length.
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http://www.deathcafe.com/
http://theamateursguide.com/
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I grew up listening to George Beverly Shea, Doug Oldham, and other old-timers of that sort.
In college I found out I was the only student who appreciated George Beverly Shea. When I’d had enough rock music in the yearbook office, I’d put in a Shea tape, which usually got confiscated (and hidden) before the end of the first song. I always thought they should at least let me listen to a few songs after I’d tolerated theirs for several hours! And my roommate’s only comment about Shea was that, if he was famous, then he probably “used to have a good voice.” That really surprised me–I thought that even if a person somehow didn’t like his style of music, the richness of his voice was clear.
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Good Morning All,
QoD: My kids are more Irish on their Dad’s side than mine, but we always had an Ulster fry on the morning of St. Paddy’s Day and cornedbeef and cabbage with potato soup in the evening. But they are more Scottish I my side, so lest they forget how completely Celtic they are we celebrate Rabbie Burns Day (Jan. 25th) too. We recite poetry, listen to Dougie MacClean and ceremoniously pipe in the haggis 😉
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Cheryl,
You were the only smart one. 😉
His voice is a good one, and yes that’s clear, at least to those who bother to listen. While I was looking and listening to a bunch of his songs in order to chose one, I was amazed at how good his voice sounded, even in some where he was in his 80’s. The man is gifted.
Chas,
George would consider you a youngster. 😉
JaniceG,
Happy Anniversary to you and Mr. G! 🙂
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I used to cook corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick’s day, but after I got married, Hubby confessed that he didn’t like it. Some times during the Easter season , the Kid and I make either a Peep cake or Peep cupcakes. It is a strawberry supreme cake with cream cheese icing decorated with colored sugar and marshmallow peeps. On year we made it for the Cub Scout cake auction intending to by it back, but someone outbid us and we didn’t get to eat any of that one. This year I’m going with the peep bunnies instead of the chickens. They lay flatter and may be easier to eat.
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Happy Anniversary to you and your husband, Janice!
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Happy anniversary Janice!
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Happy Anniversary Janice!
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Happy anniversary, Janices.
Hmm, I can’t remember any unusual celebration days growing up. We were pretty low-key. We marked birthdays with cakes (presents were always modest). Christmas was our “big” day, we went all out for that with decorations and activities.
I still remember the year my mom decided we should string (real) popcorn for the tree. So, with needle and thread — and a big tub of popped popcorn — were were put to work!
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George Beverly Shea just celebrated his 104th birthday on February 1. According to Wikipedia, he holds the world record for singing in person to the most people ever, with an estimated cumulative live audience of 220 million people. Who (besides MP) can resist his rendition of “How Great Thou Art.”
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Happy Anniversary Mrs. G!
Yesterday Christi (see my R&R) said that we should never save our passwords digitally. I asked if this meant on word processors. She said Yes.
I’ve always kept my passwords on the word processor. So I went back and coded them, except for the trivial ones, like Amazon, etc.
Harmless example: “Squadron in Texas”.
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Our son (Stephen) always reminds us when it’s Saint Stephens Day. December 26 – same as Boxing Day in Canada. We don’t celebrate either, though.
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Happy Anniversary, Mrs and Mr G!
Not me, I keep my passwords on a card next to my desk. I used to keep them on a sticky note on the computer but they kept losing their sticky so people could borrow it (it had theirs as well) to get onto their stuff.
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Chas, the whole p/w situation is sort of funny. I support a government (external-facing) application that requires a 17-position p/w requiring at least two uppercase, two lower case, and two special characters – almost impossible to remember (thus encouraging storing it somewhere). However, the truth is that one like that is way easier and quicker for an automated hacking process to find that an long one with only lower case letters, such as “oh lord my god when i in awesome wonder” (ref: GBS) 🙂
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Mumsee, that reminds me of something funny. A while ago, my Hubby (a computer guy) mentioned that he had made a note of something on his computer. I assumed he meant an electronic note, until I saw that it was on a yellow postit note stuck to his monitor.
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Happy anniversary Janice!
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I’m in password hell half the time, even with all my prompts, and wish I could figure out a method that worked well. Linda’s is a good one, as is linking places and events with dates. My problem is the sheer volume of passwords and of course you’re not supposed to use the same one twice . . .
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We’re having a party tonight to launch my book. I’m serving MREs, finger foods, beer, wine, sparkling punch and passion fruit gelato. You’re to come either as a SEAL or as if going for a massage. Door prizes every 15 minutes and a dramatic/romantic reading by my husband and I from the book at 7:15.
I’m going crazy with the details but at least the house is clean . . . 🙂
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I try to keep my passwords (and, yes, they do multiply, don’t they?) handwritten (sometimes just first letters that’ll be enough to remind me) in my datebook for work. But one or 2 I have typed into my cell phone.
Someone at work told me about a service they use called password manager or something like that, it’s an online service that’s supposed to be secure — and this person (who’s probably more savvy than I am when it comes to technology) said it’s very safe.
I usually allow at least my home computer to “save” and just auto-fill my passwords if at all possible.
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Not supposed to use the same one twice? Oops.
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Speaking of passwords, I saw this on FaceBook. “Sorry, but your password must contain an uppercase letter, a number, a haiku, a gang sign, a hieroglyph, and the blood of a virgin.”
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I had to go check to see why five year old was not out for breakfast yet. She was attempting to put her second set of sheets on her bed. Her laundry day is Tuesday. I don’t know what is going on around here. I never do.
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Michelle,
You should do a video cast on your blog. Or at least film it and load it later for those of us not in Cali. I’d like to see it. 🙂
But either way, enjoy yourself and celebrate. You earned it. 🙂
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KBells 🙂 🙂
Have fun tonight, Michelle!
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My five year old (6th Arrow) announced that she now knew how to do every part of doing the dishes — washing, rinsing, drying, putting away, and that she wants to do the whole thing sometime. I think I’ll take her up on it. 😉
Yesterday I went to a blog that I’ve gone to on occasion, Teaching Good Things. Sixth Arrow was with me when I went to it, and she pointed at the computer screen and said, “Teaching God Things. We don’t teach God things, God teaches *us* things”.
🙂
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“Never use a password twice”. I rotate them. If there was evidence of compromise, I would drop it. But not even Elvera knows where I lived when I was ten years old.
Relax Mumsee, I never knew what was going on either, but it worked out.
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Happy Anniversary Janice. I have tried and tried quite unsuccessfully to find a version of The Anniversary Waltz that my mother had on a record. All I can find is Lawrence Welk and his wife dancing to it on his show. It isn’t the one I remember. As a small child I wanted to grow up and dance to it.
I had an 11th birthday party and I remember having a cake when I was 4. When I turned 18 some friends brought a cake to my house. The next morning my dad asked whose cake it was. He probably died thinking my birthday was January 7th.
Two Christmases stand out in my memory. When I was quite young we spent a Christmas “up in the country” at the hunting cabin. For Santa to come they took me in the kitchen and warmed a dishpan on the wood stove (like a for real wood stove with burners and an oven, not one just used for heating) and gave me a bath. Santa brought me a Barbie Ranch house. When I was older my parents went somewhere on Chrismas Eve. I spent the night with Sally the neighbor down the street. She let me stay up with her until 2 am so my parents had to call and wake us up for me to walk home and see what I had gotten for Christmas. I walked in the house, glanced under the tree, and went back to bed.
Because of those things I went overboard for BG’s first few birthdays. It was important enough to me that it is in my divorce decree that BG HAS to be with me on Christmas Eve and wake up in her primary home.
I tried to create the PERFECT holidays when I was married the first time and was told I made everyone miserable. I figured if they didn’t appreciate what I did they didn’t deserve my efforts so now I am what is known as “a failed perfectionist” it is an afflication of only children and children of alcoholics so I got a double dose!
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“Where Are the Honest Atheists?” http://theweek.com/article/index/241108/where-are-the-honest-atheists
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We are not alcoholics and none of our children are only children, but we have several perfectionists. Not that they put forth the effort to produce perfection, but they tend to get depressed or angry if they do not achieve perfection. Interesting….Of course, they did have alcoholics for parents in the past.
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The birthday party every year thing is kind of new. I think i had maybe one party growing up. My nieces and nephews had one every year and I was always invited and expected to bring a present. That’s one reason I gave my son a party every year, because my brothers and SILs owe me a lot of presents. 🙂
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No odd celebrations here. But yesterday I videoed D3 tackling the snowman she built a few days ago (her idea).
Re: passwords- I use $ for s and numb3r$ for some of the 1etters. Then I can use basically the same password with variations.
Yesterday someone mentioned numbers on posts. When I was on my Kindle the other day, it showed the numbers. Must be the web browser.
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As a matter of fact we are going to a party this afternoon for my niece’s two year old. My big brother, the birthday girl’s Pawpaw, had always been a good business man and taught his girls good money sense. In spite of the economy both are doing pretty well. So I bought her a toddler sized cash register. Pawpaw will be glad to show her how to use it.
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KBells, you’re right. I also remember just having one birthday party growing up, my 10th I believe, which was great fun — my mom made it a Halloween-theme (my birthday comes just after that) and decked out the garage and backyard with bobbing for apples & other games.
My uncle Bill and my dad were the “ghosts” in the backyard. 🙂
I was listening to a couple colleagues chatting in the newsroom yesterday — one whose kids are now teen-agers, the other whose daughter is still quite young. They were complaining about all the $$$ it costs to buy presents & go to all those birthday parties for everyone, the invites apparently are never ending. Good time to be out of town on a vacation trip, they both agreed. 🙂
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And I don’t remember gifts as being part of the party I had, to be honest. I think it was, well, just a party for everyone.
Guess it was the Baby Boomer generation (and those after them) that set the bar so high, going all out for the kids, parties every year, gifts, etc.
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There comes a time in every child’s life when you can explain to them that you can spend the money on a party or you can spend the money on them. BG now chooses to go shopping and just have a few friends spend the night, watch movies, and eat pizza.
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MUMSEE: If any of your children are female and especially if their mother was an alcoholic or other addict there is a book called Perfect Daughters. It opened my eyes to so much. It took me about 6 months to get through it and I cried most of the way. It will explain a lot.
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As I now have far too many passwords (and they are too long and complicated for my aging brain to remember) and when I put them on paper, my desk is too far messy and my dyslexic brain makes far too many mistakes, I have decided to hide them in plain site. I will store my passwords on Wanderers Views. 1. Everyone hear is too kind and honest to take advantage of me. 2. No one here would want to break into the computer of a raving atheist and steal my Hellish secrets. 3. I only have $14.95 cents in my life savings, so it’s hardly worth stealing. 5. Steal MY identity? Are you kidding?
So I’ll start with my main email account and my junk reading email account. Stop reading now.
Main account:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxXXXXXxxxxx00**
Alternate email account for junk mail:
xxxxxxxxxxXXXXXxxxxx00**
Now if you could not resist peeking, please wash your brain.
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I followed the link about “honest atheists,” and read it with interest. Naturally, I asked myself, “Am I an honest atheist?”
I think I am. Cross my heart, I hope to God that I am. But you probably know what’s in my heart better than I do.
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My mother likes to tell the story of her only birthday party. Her mother had made her a cake so my mom went out and invited all the neighbor kids to her birthday party. When all these kids showed up unexpectedly for the “party”, my grandmother had to send to the store for ice cream.
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Also Mumsee, I don’t know if you have noticed this in your children or not but there is a certain level of paranoia that goes along with it. We are convinced that any time a conversation is happening and we are not privvy to it that surely we must of done something wrong and THEY are discussing it.
For instance if you are having a conversation in front of me and I hear enough of it to know it isn’t about me or isn’t any of my business I can tune you out and not process a word of the conversation, but if you are having the same conversation but are whispering or are “behind closed doors” I tune in and strain to hear.
For example this week some things went on at work that while I know generally what is going on enough to know that it isn’t any of my business and doesn’t concern me because I was not part of it and the conversation was had in low tones it drove me CRAZY. I kept having to tell myself I wasn’t about me and wasn’t any of my business. My rational brain knew all of that but some part of me was obsessed wondering if I had somehow done something wrong and THAT was what they were discussing.
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Happy Anniversary Janice! How many years?
I love George Beverly Shea….His Eye is on the Sparrow…Mr Shea was singing that song on the TV as they wheeled me out to surgery 35 years ago as I gave birth to our Katie…I always smile upon hearing that song 🙂
It’s snowing! Supposed to get a foot today and the winds up to 50mph…a stay inside day around here…and Paul is going to tackle taxes…he can get quite bombastic when doing this…I want to leave…I don’t like the tension 🙂
Qod…..we make certain to have a birthday cake for Jesus at Christmas and the Christmas Story is read from the Word by papa before opening presents. Everyone receives just three presents….two smaller (frankincense and myrrh) and one bigger present (gold).
I had only one birthday party as a kid…when I was 12…I was shocked my Mom did that for me…
Birthdays in our family are celebrated with just us as a family…I am stunned at the production of birthday parties thrown for kids nowadays…great expense, more presents given than any one child should see in a lifetime…they rip open a present, throw it to the side and rip into the next…never recognizing the gift giver with a simple thank you…it is sad to me
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$14.95 huh. I bet I could get a least a nice paperback Bible with that or maybe a yard sign for which ever Republican is running for congress in this district. 🙂
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For religious joke of the day, I decided not to pick on Christians or atheists. Let’s see, who does that leave? How about the Chinese? They had a religion variously transliterated as Taoism or Daoism. I had an uncle and aunt who were a bit taken with it. They ended up living in Taiwan for a while when my cousin became a Taiwanese millionaire. Oddly enough, my cousin told me that while she was living in Taiwan she became a Christian. Maybe she found Jesus after she read some of these Taoism jokes.
First, I had to check: what Taoists believe? Off to Wikipedia, which in part told me
Taoist propriety and ethics may vary depending on the particular school, but in general tends to emphasize wu-wei (action through non-action), “naturalness”, simplicity, spontaneity, and the Three Treasures: compassion, moderation, and humility.
Well, for a religion without Jesus, that does not sound too bad.
However, there seems to be a lot of emphasis on “nothing.” As one comment from someone at Southern Cross University says,
There are similarities and differences between Taoism’s “Nothingness” (无) vs Buddhism’s “Emptiness” (空). OK, this is getting to deep for me. I’m going to the jokes in the next comment.
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Maybe the best party we had was when we asked people NOT to bring presents . . . 🙂
Photos of tonight’s party will be on my blog on Tuesday–hoping one of my friends will come dressed as a SEAL. I’ll be in a bathrobe . . . 🙂
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Yeah, but it is a spa quality bathrobe. Did you get it at a hotel?
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Taoist Jokes
What did one Taoist say to the other? Nothing
Why don’t Immortals tell riddles? They don’t know the answers. What did the Immortal tell the mendicant? Nothing
How many Taoists does it take to change a lightbulb? None (i.e. Nothing)
Knock Knock. Who’s there? Tao. Tao who? Tao art Nothing
What did the priest say to the Immortal? No Way! What did the Immortal reply? Nothing
Two Taoists went into a bar with a rabbi and a priest. The rabbi said to the priest, When we go to Heaven, we’re allowed to leave. The priest said to the rabbi, when we go to Hell, we’re stuck there. The Taoists said nothing, we’re not going anywhere
What happens when you get two Taoists together? Nothing
Taoist riddle: What happens when you cross a duck and a mouse? Nothing
Two Taoists were talking. One asked, When is an obstruction not an obstruction? The other said, When the Tao gets in the Way (i.e. Nothing)
What’s black and white and red (read) all over? The Taoteching (i.e. Nothing)
What weighs nothing and a thousand pounds? Two five-hundred pound Taoists (i.e. Nothing)
Hmmm … I don’t hear anyone laughing. I guess you had to be there. (Nowhere.)
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Thanks for the link, Cheryl. Interesting article.
Here’s where atheism drops the ball and refuses to acknowledge the ramifications of what it acknowledges to be true. The author, A. C. Grayling, does acknowledge the necessary nihilism inherent to atheism which is the “honesty” he’s referring to, but he isn’t really so honest as he’s convinced he is He talks enthusiastically about a nihilist poet, Philip Larkin, who writes about the lack of “nobility” to his own atheistic worldview. He then talks about qualities of “compassionate generosity and honesty of Larkin’s atheism” which “also infuse a poem titled ‘Faith Healing,’ which reflects on the deepest sources of humanity’s religious impulses.” Grayling explains, “Larkin suggests that human beings are creatures governed by the longing to love — and even more so, by the longing to be loved. It is a need, a hunger that never can be permanently satiated.”
In this short section, he acknowledges both the inherent creatureliness of humans and the innate longings we all possess. And these acknowledged realities, these indisputable “facts,” necessarily imply both a Creator and a purpose. It makes no sense whatsoever, according to an atheistic worldview, that purposeless matter would possess not only these incoherent ideas (in the context of their worldview, that is), but even longings for, such non-referential things as nobility or love. The “evidence” (that atheists like to talk so much about) leads to these ideas and longings that we possess having an actual reference point. And when we consider this, as well as all the rest of the evidence of our human experience, it leads conclusively to that reference point being the triune God revealed in Scripture. This was what C.S. Lewis explained as the inescapable conclusion he came to leading to his own conversion when he wrote, “If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was
made for another world.”
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I’ve always appreciated Camus and Nietzsche. The ability to stare into the abyss and still find purpose is an under-appreciated skill which Camus particularly excelled at. Nietzsche was just honest but also recognized that the death of god placed a huge burden on man that he might be incapable of handling. Ironically, evidence for this inability arose through a misunderstanding of Nietzsche.
Atheism is not good for humans but its not bad either. Its simply an acceptable and probably the most reasonable conclusion given the evidence. Whether a belief or non-belief are good or bad is the responsibility of the believer or non-believer. And judgment belongs to our follow man.
In this atheism demands a heavy responsibility and is without recourse in case of failure or unrelenting opposition.
I will be interested to see if Grayling believes that godlessness is unambiguously good for humans as this reviewer claims he does. In reading the other “new” atheists, I understand they see atheism as better than the alternatives but not as an unambiguous good.
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MP- I see nothing funny in your Taoism jokes. 😉
I only had one BD party growing up, and it wasn’t until my 20th. When I was young, we just got together with my uncle and his family on birthdays. On my 20th, I mentioned to my girlfriend that I had never had a party, so she told my housemates and they got together a surprise party for me. I had to wonder when I answered the phone why a man who sounded like my gf’s dad wanted to talk to one of the housemates.
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“I will be interested to see if Grayling believes that godlessness is unambiguously good for humans as this reviewer claims he does.”
Which reviewer are you referring to?
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HRW,
“Atheism is not good for humans but its not bad either. Its simply an acceptable and probably the most reasonable conclusion given the evidence. Whether a belief or non-belief are good or bad is the responsibility of the believer or non-believer. And judgment belongs to our follow man.”
But this assumes way too much. If any religon is correct and there is a God, the entire idea crumbles. As an example, I’ll go with the “christian religon”, for obvious reasons. Atheism is obviously a bad idea, and this minset gets you the ultimate punishment, eternal seperation from God. Hell, if you prefer. That’s as bad as it gets.
And on the last part I think you meant “fellow man”, not follow man, so I’ll address it as fellow. While that’s partially true, we do judge one another to some degree, by actions, words, and deeds, but that’s only in the here and now. If the “christian religon” is right, and again, I believe it is, we are warned throughout scripture the error in this way of thinking. Judgement comes to all. Your atheism won’t do a thing to save you or anyone else from that final judgement. Only Christ saves.
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Ree: the author of the linked article. Based on his comments and judgments I’m assuming he had an advance copy of Grayling’s new book.
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Here’s an idea that I like about Passwords. It came from a big-wig IT guy.
Pick a sentence. It can be anything: from the Bible, a favorite novel, or a favorite poem. Let’s use Linda’s, but put it in sentence form (sort of … it is an incomplete sentence).
Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder!
Now, if it is in sentence form, it already has a few capitals, and punctuation, which you can use or not. But, DON’T use it as a sentence. It makes too much sense and is too long.
Take the first letters ONLY of the sentence, but keep most of the punctuation. Also, it is cool if you take one of the letter “o”s and replace it with a zero, and/or one of the letter “l”s or “I”s (lower case L and upper case i) and replace it with the number one, because many sites require a number or two in your password.
Now, here’s a great password: 0Lmgw1iaw!
But, since it actually makes sense TO YOU (it is a favorite sentence, after all, you will remember it.)
However, there is still one more step. Since — in the rare event that it was hacked — you don’t want to lose ALL your passwords, so, on the end of this password (which you use everywhere), you add two more letters: either the first two letters of whatever site it is for, or the first two letters of the syllables of the site you are on.
So, for THIS site (wandering views), your password would be either: 0Lmgw1iaw!wa (the first two letters of Wandering)
OR
0Lmgw1iaw!wd (the first letters of the first two syllables Wan – der)
Some sites, won’t let you use punctuation, so you take it out for those sites (although it is HIGHLY annoying and will often require you to stop and think for a minute, “Why isn’t my password working???”
You don’t have to use this particular system (although, it works pretty great), but find A system that makes sense and use it. In other words, don’t just keep making up random passwords. Have a system that makes sense to you, but which will not make sense to just anyone.
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Whoops! Wandering Views corrected my password!!!!!
It should be (let’s try this) 0LmGw1iaw!wv (Zero – upper case L – lower case m – Upper case G – lower case w – number 1 – lower case a and w – exclamation point – lower case w and v)
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Huh?
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Thanks, Kim, it has now been ordered. You describe several of my daughters exactly. We have been trying to help them figure it out. One of them is absolutely certain she is cursed to repeat the mistakes of her mother. She is headed that way for sure unless SomeOne intervenes.
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HRW,
Ah, I see. I thought I was responding to Grayling’s thoughts, but I was actually responding to the reviewer’s thoughts. Embarrassing that I overlooked something so basic. Even so, I stand by my response, only it should be directed primarily at Damon Linker. But regardless of the denial of the nihilism that Linker rightly acknowledges from the “new atheists” (of which Grayling is apparently one, albeit one I’m not familiar with) my response is applicable to them as well.
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Unlike the new atheists, Grayling has been a philosophy scholar of some repute. The new atheists are journalists and a biologist. Grayling is far more nuanced and less adversarial in his approach, he likens religious institutions as equivalent to any other institution in civil society and thus has the same rights and responsibilities as any other association. I expect his book to be far more nuanced and balanced then Hitchens et al.
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“probably the most reasonable conclusion given the evidence”
Seriously? Look around.
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Tammy,
Sadly, those are not good passwords. Automated hacking software runs through every possibility of every number, letter, and special character in each position of a p/w to hit on the right combination. Therefore, mixing upper, lower, and special characters into a non-word is meaningless to them and not a deterrent. However, the longer the password, the more time consuming it will be to try every combination, thus the longer, the better. Since special characters are no different than letters, a long, normal sentence is much safer than a short “odd” p/w. Add to that the fact that you are more likely to remember it and not have to write it down where someone can see it.
A short “odd” p/w will most likely deter another person from getting into your account but the odds of someone wanting to do that are far smaller than being hacked by an automated process. Unfortunately, most p/w rules don’t take this into consideration and force you into a shorter one with upper, lower, and special characters.
BTW, a “big-wig IT guy” isn’t necessarily tech-savvy (trust me, I’m in IT and I’ve known many of them).
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A great advantage in knowing that someone made a mistake is not repeating.
I was careful not to make any of the mistakes I saw my father make.
One thing my dad used to say was, “A fool has to learn everything the hard way.”
By that, he meant a person who has to make his own mistakes is an idiot. A wise man learns from others.
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Chas, my uncle use to tell his grandson, “If you’re going to be stupid, you’d better be tough.”
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The mistakes the daughters seem to follow are the mistakes that lead to marrying an abusive man. They know absolutely that they do not want to live like their mothers. But, abusive men tend to appear to be very concerned and caring and interested in meeting the needs of the girl. Very understanding that the girl does not want to repeat. And the girls fall for it. No matter how many other women tell them their stories or tell them to be careful. And it is scary.
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Perhaps, HRW, but philosophically nuanced or not, I don’t see anything to indicate that Grayling addresses the problems I mentioned which is that, regardless of what the atheist materialists say, the evidence of human experience points to the triune God.
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Ree, I have been pondering the situation you mentioned the other day, and I would not have advised you any way but the way you chose. May God richly bless you in your choice as your husband sees your actions, though it has been many years.
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MP- I see nothing funny in your Taoism jokes.
I will refund all the money you spent reading them. No, that doesn’t work.
I will refund all the time you wasted reading them. Perhaps, if you reach “eternal life,” you won’t regret the time you spent reading me.
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Linda, a password of 12 characters of random value isn’t a “good” password?! A full sentence might or might not be better, but for those of us who aren’t expert typists, typing 25 characters every time we wish to check our e-mail isn’t realistic. I sometimes think that those who simply stay off the internet are the smartest.
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Cheryl, I think you are right on! If God had intended us to be on the Internet all day, reading and posting comments on religious or atheist web sites (as the case may be), He would have implanted Routers in our brains. Or at least sockets for plugging in our smart phones.
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Sorry Ree I don’t see how human experience points to a triune God. Even if I was forced to conclude that a God may be necessary given the evidence, the trinity would be a different issue. As for human experience, the commonalities only speak to what traits are the best means to survive and flourish.
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MP @ 17:25:40- I was giving you a round-about, tongue-in-cheek compliment. When I say I see nothing funny in them,that means the nothing in them is funny. The only refund needed is nothing!
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In reading the other “new” atheists, I understand they see atheism as better than the alternatives but not as an unambiguous good.
I have yet to see any atheist *non-arbitrarily* locate the standard against which they’re measuring “better” and “good” and the like. Hard emphasis on *non-arbitrarily.*
Ree, whoever your post was directed at, it was a good one.
That Grayling guy looks like Dawkins with a bigger ‘do.
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Peter, that was pretty smooth. Every day I ask myself, Stephen, “How close are you to dementia?” Missing a sly riposte such as yours is a bad sign. When I was 30 years old, I would have been able to swat a tricky feint like that out of the park. Though I was mixing my metaphors by the time I was seven years old and never stopped.
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I thought you guys might want to read a little about my own little slice of heaven. When you see the photo, I had lunch there today.
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Oh! It would help if I gave you the link:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/My-Kind-of-Town-Fairhope-Alabama.html
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Here’s another joke, just because it just made me smile.</i?
What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah's Witness? When he knocks on the door, he doesn't know why he's there.
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Kim, that looks very nice. Reminds me a bit of Monterey, CA, where I spent some time as a child. Did Alabama rejoin the United States?
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No. We are an independent State of mind. Quite frankly sometime back in the 1980’s the Mayor and his wife visited Carmel, CA they came home with a plan…..
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Linda,
I don’t have the article now, but he was a “big wig.” He does computer encryption and helps people be safe on their computers (government, big business, elsewhere.)
And, I’ve read (from him and others) that a sentence (a real one) is definitely NOT safe.
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And, Cheryl is absolutely right. 99 out of 100 times I need a password, the site simply will NOT accept the kind of long password you are suggesting. Not to mention, that I’m simply not going to like life if I have to type such a behemoth in every time.
I don’t have to write my password down … ever … because it has a system that makes sense to me.
Perhaps people protecting government secrets or spies need to think along such lines, but — since most passwords for every day Internet things have to be between 6 and 12 characters — often with a number, and since writing down numerous passwords somewhere is unsafe, having a good system works well.
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Heavens! My ATM card is only a password of FOUR numbers! Probably not the safest, but it is what it is. That one was randomly generated. I was going to change it to something that made sense to me, and then decided that I could manage to memorize 4 numbers. Except, of course, for the 3 or 4 times that I completely forgot it. 😦 (BTW, forgetting one’s PIN number can be VERY embarrassing. People at the store start looking at you funny.)
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According to a security site:
“Avoid creating passwords that use:
Dictionary words in any language.
Words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and abbreviations.
Sequences or repeated characters. Examples: 12345678, 222222, abcdefg, or adjacent letters on your keyboard (qwerty).
Personal information. Your name, birthday, driver’s license, passport number, or similar information.”
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Kim, Like Fairhope, the “natives” in Hendersonville don’t want us to be here. They want “Hooterville” to be the way it was. Problem is, there isn’t any money nor future in the way it was. Main street is a pretty place, but it’s a place for tourists, not regulars. Regulars have to go over the mall, or worse yet, to Walmart/Sams to shop. Everything that is anything has moved out of town.
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100! 🙂
Too soon?
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Duke and NC in 1/2 an hour.
Go Blue Devils!
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Tammy, you are correct (as I said, myself) most sites won’t let you use a long password. What you all are saying is true IF the issue is another person stealing your password. However, if you are concerned about cyber-hacking, which is becoming more and more prevent, then the longer, the better, and the value of the characters doesn’t matter. BTW, four digits for your ATM card is fine because that p/w isn’t usable anywhere but at the ATM or a POS machine, which isn’t subject to cyber hacking. Blessings.
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I use an old telephone number that is only significant to me and different dogs I have shared my life. My former last name was good because it was a common word but misspelled. I can come up with a password. What gives me trouble is a user name.
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Oh my heavens, Kim! Me too!!!
Some people are SO creative. The best I’ve ever done is use my initials combined with my husband’s initials. B-O-R-I-N-G
I just can’t think of anything good. And, really, I can be a very creative person, but NOT with user names.
And, if I’m at all creative (not too likely, and not compared to someone else). then I forget it anyway.
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So, my son’s debate team came in 8th today out of 16 today. Not nearly as good as last time (5th out of 30), and he missed out on a speaker award this time (3rd place last time).
I’m a little disappointed, but I know that — to some degree — it is the “luck of the draw.” In other words, his team won two of the three debates they had with very high marks. But, their first debate was a bye (which means they did not debate), so their scores for that one (and his speaker score) were averaged by the other three.
And, their final debate was against a “squirrel case.” Personally, I don’t like those. It means that the other team came up with a “trick” case: something that technically fit the definition of the subject and the parameters of the debate, but which is so “out there” that no one has prepared to debate against it.
It brought everyone’s scores down. Even the “winning” team in that last debate got low scores.
That makes me grumpy. My son is working hard to prepare a REAL debate case. He and his partner have reams of research. My son speaks very well.
And, then a team comes in and runs a “squirrel case” (known and disliked, but not technically illegal), and ruins everyone’s scores that participated in that debate. 😦
I guess that is part of the learning experience too.
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Did you ever see that cartoon where a man and his daughter are greeting a new puppy in their backyard? The father says, “Pick the name carefully, you’ll be using it as your password for the rest of your life.” 🙂
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Ah-ha, found the cartoon:
http://gizmodo.com/5947393/remember-youre-not-only-naming-your-pet-youre-also-securing-your-digital-future
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100!
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Mumsee,
Thanks for telling me that. I remember thinking at the time that surely God would convert my husband within a year or two because I just couldn’t stand it otherwise. Ha ha. Eventually I kind of stopped even thinking that would ever happen, but in recent years, even though I still see no outward evidence of it being the case, I’m starting to have faith, again, that it will happen someday. But now I know that, whatever happens, God’s grace is sufficient for me.
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HRW,
Granted, God’s trinitarian nature isn’t something one would ever just figure out without it being expressly and divinely revealed. But it’s something that, once one knows of it, it makes sense of the God’s eternal love, which is something that neither a unitarian god, nor a plurality of gods can. And if God is not a God of love, then human love has no reference and hence, no meaning.
And when you say that, “as for human experience, the commonalities only speak to what traits are the best means to survive and flourish,” you’re going straight to why we think and feel as we do, without addressing the insurmountable materialist problem of mind from matter in the first place. But even overlooking that, we can survive and flourish without any necessary sense of ultimate truth and meaning. In fact, that’s what the atheists want. And if we can’t, then atheists are a bunch of maladaptive anomalies who would be better off, perhaps, extinct.
The truth is, atheism has nothing to do with the evidence of our existence. Rather, it’s just another expression of the wishful thinking of a sinful race of would-be autonomists. And I say that, of course, as a member of that race, but as one who was saved by the grace of the God I spat at.
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Thanks, solarpancake.
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I have yet to see any atheist *non-arbitrarily* locate the standard against which they’re measuring “better” and “good” and the like. Hard emphasis on *non-arbitrarily.*
There is NO NON-ARBITRARY STANDARD for measuring better and good and the like. When religious people talk about “absolute values” they just take their personal preferences, assign them to an imaginary entity called “God,” and say, “My value is absolute and non-arbitrary, nyah, nyah, nyah, atheists.”
If it feels good or tastes good or makes me feel as if I accomplished something, I consider it “good.” If it hurts or makes me spit it out because it tastes so bad, I consider it bad. Everyone does this. It’s just that a lot of people won’t admit it.
We’ve run over some variation of this a thousand times. “Moral” (ethical) good is based on physical evolution and cultural development. Empathy is one of the biggest reasons for “good” behavior. If somebody hits me, I feel pain. When I see someone hit and probably hurting, I have a biological reaction we call “empathy,” my nervous system gives me a jolt based on my previous experiences based on being hurt and feeling pain. We are complicated creatures (far more complicated than the most advanced computer developed so far) so there a multitude of factors involved. I might hit someone because I feel threatened. I might refrain from hitting someone because I am old and have never been a good combatant. As intelligent animals we all make these calculations and decisions thousands of times a day, mostly without even thinking about them.
Religious believers are not better than atheists. Religious believers are not worse than atheists. Atheists are not better than religious believers. Atheists are not worse than atheists. Terms such as “better” and “worse” are TOTALLY arbitrary because they are totally based on personal preference.
I prefer atheism to religious belief because it appears to me to be much closer to truth. The universe is an accident. Human beings developed through evolution. As far as I can tell, we are the only thinking animals on earth. I suspect our self-awareness and knowledge of our mortality drives us half crazy. The often vicious cunning that catapulted us to the top of the food chain will probably cause us to destroy ourselves as a species before the end of the century.
I’ve gotten a little mellower in my old age, but I still tend to think (and it’s a completely arbitrary opinion) that it would be “better” if we do destroy ourselves. Too bad for my granddaughter — she’s a cute, intelligent, and talented little girl — but I don’t put her chances of surviving this century particularly high.
I guess you better pray REALLY hard. If there is a GOD, it’s time for HIM to do his stuff.
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“I prefer atheism to religious belief because it appears to me to be much closer to truth.”
Why the preference for truth?
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Good question. There’s no simple answer. As a species, we probably have a bias for truth because it is a survival trait. A lot of times we can get away with making errors because they are not swiftly deadly. For a while people thought tobacco was harmless and even had some benefits, and as smoking/chewing does not kill instantly, the addiction part often overcame other reasons not to use it. In the long run, almost everyone realized the deadly aspects. People live longer than they use to because truth seeking pays off.
As a child, my parents valued truth seeking (though they had some faulty ideas). Culture, education, various influences and experiences pushed me toward an intellectual and emotional favor toward asking, “Is this true? How do I know.” as well as a strong emotional component of, “That’s not true! Ewwwww!” when something struck me as false.
Your predilection toward religious belief was created by an equally complex amalgam of influences and reasons.As far as I can tell, you lean as much toward seeking truth as I do in most areas of life, but as soon as we get into the area of religious belief your compass needle swings strongly toward a different pole. We will never agree in that area. I guess it’s kind of sad about your husband and you and your differences. My wife and I are closer in regard to religion, but we are far apart in many areas. Sometimes couples survive these differences; sometimes they don’t.
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Oh Random. You’re just saying that because it’s your preference.
Wait. That’s what everybody does about everything. You’ve succeeded in saying absolutely nothing at all.
Give my arbitrary “best” to your wife and family.
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Solar, thank you for your good wishes for my family. I return the same thought and best wishes for your family.
As far as “saying absolutely nothing at all,” I hope you read the Taoist jokes. It’s a religion (like the TV series Steinfeld) that is about absolutely nothing. As I am now 69 years old and aware that I will extinguish (completely) one of these days, whether I want to or not and whether I tell myself there is a deity or not, I am trying to convince myself that I look forward to “nothing.” Because that is what I will get. It’s just the odd way things are.
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What’s “odd” about there being nothing? For that matter, what’s odd about anything at all? Everything just is what it is, right?
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6 Arrows’ QoD: Although my family is Baptist, we celebrate Epiphany (or as we call it, The Day of the Three Kings). We draw names out of a hat and have to find a gift under $5 for that person. We also make all our favorite things for supper. The tradition started as as a way of combating the after-Christmas blues. Christmas week was filled with so many friends and exended family that after it was all over, the house seemed lonely. So having a special dinner just as a family, where we all had a small gift, was a good solution.
I recently met someone who marks their half-birthday. I remarked that between celebrating one’s birthday, one’s half-birthday and one’s un-birthday, you could celebrate the whole year 😉
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Cheryl – Re your George Beverly Shea tape: I have observed that no matter how opened minded my peer group pride themselves on being, they became completely bigoted and intolerant when it comes to music. Having grown up loving classical music, I learned pretty quickly to keep my preferences to myself. The invention of the MP3 player made that a lot easier. I often amuse myself when I’m in a train or bus where there is a lot of young people with their earphones leaking rap or Lady Gaga by pulling out my player just to fit in 🙂
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Roscuro, I celebrate my half-birthday, sort of. Or, rather, I chose a day to be born that’s almost exactly six months from Christmas (two days off). My college roommate had a birthday exactly six months from Christmas; in my years in Chicago, we usually celebrated together. When I brought home my dog as a puppy, it was on my way home from visiting one of my brothers for Christmas (the breeder was five hours away, so it seemed smart to combine the two trips); the day I brought her home was my half-birthday.
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Cheryl, [please read this with a friendly, conversational tone – not an adversarial one] Do you really think it’s harder to type:
TheQuikBrownFoxJjumpedOverTheLazyDogIsMyPassword
than:
3m0cl3WPa$$w0rd##
The shorter one is so awful that I keep it saved on my computer and copy and paste it in, so if I had to do the same for the longer one it wouldn’t be a big deal and it’s a stronger password.
BTW – a little computer trivia – the first one is called “Camel Case.”
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I thought you were big on empirical evidence, Random.
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This should be an interesting read;
Bob Ney’s, Republican rep from Ohio tells his side of the story which led to his resignation. The corruption is unending.
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Ree;
Random stole my response in terms of ethical standards
from ree
without addressing the insurmountable materialist problem of mind from matter in the first place.
There is no problem merely a Cartesian assertion of a difference between mind and matter. The evidence indicates that many of the qualities we once assigned to an ephemeral mind is actually the product of matter. Based on this trend, Cartesian dualism will have difficultly surviving.
But even overlooking that, we can survive and flourish without any necessary sense of ultimate truth and meaning. In fact, that’s what the atheists want. And if we can’t, then atheists are a bunch of maladaptive anomalies who would be better off, perhaps, extinct.
Evolution adaptation will determine whether or which religion survives — I can accept that.
What’s “odd” about there being nothing? For that matter, what’s odd about anything at all? Everything just is what it is, right?
I recently finished a book (not very good) which attempted to answer why there is something. The answer: “nothing” is unstable. Not a very satisfying answer in that it just pushes the query further back.
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Thanks to everyone for the anniversary wishes yesterday.
We had a nice sermon on love today at church which seemed appropriate after the anniversary yesterday.
Nice weather in Atlanta today for anyone who has time to be outdoors. I need to be working on making a Black Forest Cake for my husband’s birthday tomorrow.
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I thought you were big on empirical evidence, Random.
I am. Any time you have any, I will consider it seriously. For example, I am inclined to believe my body exists, my wife exists, my house exists, our chickens exist, etc. I am inclined to believe I live on a large island. I am inclined to believe the United States exists, having just crossed it by train. These beliefs seem to be based on empirical evidence reaching me by sight, sound, touch, scent, and taste.
I am also inclined to believe you and Ree exist, though here the evidence gets a little scanty. Perhaps I am imagining you? Perhaps I need to have my mental health evaluated again?
The empirical evidence for the existence of God strikes me as very, very slight indeed. I have heard there is empirical evidence for the existence of God. I find what I’ve encountered so far quite unconvincing and unimpressive. Apparently, you and Ree find it overwhelming. I guess that leaves us a bit at loggerheads, I guess. As I mentioned not long ago, God could easily settle the dispute by writing his Bible updates with letters of fire in the sky. It would be very rude and disrespectful of me to say that God has become a deaf-mute since the days when he talked to people directly and on at least one occasion said, “Kill your first born,” or something like that. Perhaps later he stated his case more vigorously by sending his own first born to earth and saying, “Go get yourself nailed to a cross and show you are a chip off the old block, kid.” As I said, that is possibly rude and disrespectful, so please don’t read what I just said, and if you did, please erase it from your mind. Thank you.
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I am not sure that atheists such as the dead Christopher Hitchens or the alive Richard Dawkins or this new fellow, Grayling — really use words such as “good” and “bad” in the same way you criticize me for, but avoiding using such words in that fashion contributes to my already deadly fault of being long-winded.
Although each of them is at those three atheists is at least a thousand times more intelligent and articulate than I am, if they don’t at least recognize that “good” and “bad” are entirely arbitrary and subjective than they are being stupid atheists in that regard. Probably everyone who participates on this web site is very intelligent, but not everyone is equally intelligent. So not meaning any insult, I will say that one of you is smarter than another person here and that one of you is stupider than another person here.
For example, KBells said, Speaking of passwords, I saw this on FaceBook. “Sorry, but your password must contain an uppercase letter, a number, a haiku, a gang sign, a hieroglyph, and the blood of a virgin.” I consider that very intelligent (though my evaluation may only indicate that I am very stupid.
My objectivity in these matters is greatly slanted because I favor jokes. Hey, it’s time for one! I will pray for a joke!
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Here goes. Kind of non-denominational in a way.
A collector of rare books ran into an acquaintance who told him he had just thrown away an old Bible that he found in a dusty, old box. He happened to mention that Guten-somebody-or-other had printed it.
“Not Gutenberg?” Gasped the collector.
“Yes, that was it!”
“You idiot! You’ve thrown away one of the first books ever printed. A copy recently sold at an auction for half a million dollars!”
“Oh, I don’t think this book would have been worth anything close to that much,” replied the man. “It was scribbled all over in the margins by some guy named Martin Luther.”
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Linda, for me personally the sentence would probably be harder. Case in point, this is how you wrote it, typos and all: “TheQuikBrownFoxJjumpedOverTheLazyDogIsMyPassword.”
If I were writing the one that had a letter for every word, I’d have to think about each letter, so I’d hit them one at a time. With the sentence, I’d have to avoid putting in spaces (which I find very hard to do) and avoid typos (which I find very hard to do). In the real world I’m constantly backspacing. So
“JackandJillwentupt ehhiolkl tofetchapailof water” (my attempt at a sentence) would be rejected, and since I wouldn’t be able to see what I’d actually typed, I wouldn’t know what I’d gotten wrong. Doing fewer characters would work better for me–or, yes, cut and paste.
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And, with my “system” :-), I have it memorized pretty well.
Like Cheryl, as someone with a strong language background, I find it very difficult to type out a sentence without the proper grammar, spelling, and spaces. I find that more difficult than typing out a “code” I created. 🙂
However, I realize that a more technical person might not find it so difficult.
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It is quite possible I may have the worlds dimmest most unloveable child. Her father just brought her home. She walked through the kitchen and said her dad was mad at her. I followed him outside to ask what happened. He used a dirty word and told me she had spoken less than twenty words to him all weekend.
I have had the same Rainbow vacuum cleaner since she was 20 months old. She is now 15 YEARS old. I asked her to vacuum the house. She doesn’t know how to put it together or how to vacuum. I talked her through it. She didn’t invent that whole ignorance is bliss thing. I wrote the book on it. How does she think I got her father to clean the toilets the entire time we were married. Mr. P does a fair to middlin’ job on bathrooms himself and as long as someone else does it I am not going to complain.
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By the way…when was the last time you had homemade cabbage rolls? It’s whats for dinner at the H house.
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Hello everyone! Hubby and I had a nice anniversary celebration Friday night. We stayed at a fancy hotel and went out to eat at a (supposedly) wonderful restaurant. Unfortunately, the restaurant wasn’t very good, but we had a good time anyway. Saturday, the whole family went to the rodeo. It was incredibly crowded (70,000+ people). The girls enjoyed themselves. I felt like I was being herded like cattle everywhere we went. I’m not much for crowds. However, I survived. Tomorrow, me and the girls and my best friend and her daughter are going to Bandera (my hometown in the Texas Hill Country) for spring break. It should be fun. We plan on going on a trail ride while we’re there.
Happy (late) anniversary, Janice!
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I have never made homemade cabbage rolls. In fact, I’ve never eaten them at all! 🙂
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Kim …. our kids should get together, mine doesn’t understand a washing machine nor the vacuum. As for speech patterns, only when she wants a ride. Homemade cabbage rolls from my ex-grandmother in law were amazing.
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I got this old Eddy Arnold song on my mind while coming out of SS this morning. I don’t know why. It wasn’t one of his noted songs. But I had it on a 45rpm disc and copied it to CD. Couldn’t get it off my mind.
This, of course is from youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgF4xDhbk9Y
You may enjoy it too.
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Food for thought
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Is “junk food” still food?
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hwesseli: It’s all the fault of the rich. Even they already pay most of the taxes, let’s just keep making them pay more, and in the meantime we’ll just kill off all the job creators.
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Even though…
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Of course those atheists, like you, are either misguided, short-sighted, or dishonest, Random. Ultimately, you’re being inconsistent. And philosophically, that means you’re being “stupid” (to use your term). Hitchens was big on making value statements about the effects of religion, as in “religion is *bad.*” Those atheists’ and your use of “good” and “bad” is close enough. Doesn’t matter how you’re using it. I think I’ve mentioned this to you before, but you’re being inconsistent when you make your own value-laden (and non-empirically assumed) assessment of, say, Christians who oppose gay marriage, then turn around and say all value-statements are equal and equally meaningless.
Since I doubt you follow all this simple logic, I’ll just offer it as commentary on the logic of those published atheists: they talk with equal emphasis about both the absence of absolutes AND what is good and bad for humanity. What a glaring, hopelessly irreconcilable inconsistency.
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Tychicus
They’re not job creators. Most jobs are created by small businesses. The Germans called this Mittelstand and its been the key to their ability to maintain high quality manufacturing jobs against Chinese competition.
Note that the American economy was far better and had a more secure middle class in the 50s and 60s when the tax rate on the 1% was far higher than it is today.
Solar
You can use the terms good and bad without having a reference to an absolute. Is an act or institution producing results that help or hinder is a pragmatic baseliine which suffices.
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OK, last p/w post ever. You can put spaces in a password. So if the app accepts one of this length, you could use:
It is quite possible I may have the worlds dimmest most unloveable child.
HT: Kim 🙂
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HRW and the myth. That man does not know what he is talking about.
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Hwaseli… even “results” and “suffice”necessarily imply a standard. Do you want just ANY result? That merely describes cause and effect. If you call one result good and another bad, you’re invoking absolutes. So “suffice” doesn’t just solve the prob. Suffice for what?
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“Help or hinder” to what ends? Why those ends and not others?
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Man, posting by phone is tough.
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HRW,
You like Random’s arguments? You mean like this one–“When I see someone hit and probably hurting, I have a biological reaction we call “empathy,” my nervous system gives me a jolt based on my previous experiences based on being hurt and feeling pain.”
So your nervous system gives you empathy. Great. When I was a kid, I used to have a neighbor whose nervous system gave him pleasure when he caught frogs from the cemetery pond and put firecrackers in their mouths and lit them. And Jeffrey Dahmer’s nervous system gave him pleasure to rape, murder and eat little boys. Different people, different nervous systems.
But you can’t hold this view and render judgment on anyone for anything. There’s no such thing as guilt in your worldview. Everything is just a process of matter in motion. So why are you guys on the left so darned judgmental?
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Bingo!
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The difference between most of us and the odd psychopath is we experience mirror neurons ie neurons which fire when we observe actions and emotions in others. Thus empathy is derived from a shared experience. Psychopaths are exceptions which do not posses or have a shortage of mirror neurons. Children are not fully develop and many have yet to develop empathy.
Guilt, as an emotion, is perhaps merely just a form of empathy.
The left is then not judgmental just posses more mirror neurons.
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Hwesseli,
You do realize that you just got rid of any argument for justice and punishment of criminals, I hope.
If an act by another person brings us pain but brings that person pleasure, we can’t even judge, let alone punish. We can, I suppose, show them what pain “feels like,” but not because they deserve it. If there is no right and wrong, we cannot say either that what they did was “wrong” or whether punishment is right or wrong. Every man for himself, everyone doing what is right in his own eyes.
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I tend to view the correctional system as useful for protection from violent criminals who don’t posses empathy. Non-violent criminals don’t belong in jail.
in most cases, everyone does what is right in their own eyes but this tends to match what other people think is right also. Thats the result of mirror neurons.
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“The left is then not judgmental just posses more mirror neurons.”
Seems to me the left has all kinds of nasty names for the people you believe not to possess enough mirror neurons.
And I’m wasn’t referring to guilt as an emotion, but guilt as a judgment.
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God has a name for the psychopath’s problem. It’s called sin. Oh, and it’s a problem all of us are born with. God also has a solution to the sin problem. It’s called the propitiatory sacrifice of his Son, Jesus, on the cross. Believe it or not, it is the truth.
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The left is then not judgmental just posses more mirror neurons.
Of course, whether this is true or not, it still gives us no access to “right and wrong.” At most, it would just be making a statement of fact. Any application of right and wrong that comes from that property of neurons would be entirely manufactured and arbitrary. Not only would the act of assigning right and wrong value to things (on the basis of this mirror neuron thing) be arbitrary, it would be determined merely by physical laws. Wouldn’t that be awful? To have your moral reasoning dictated to you by chemistry and not arrived at by careful thought and reasoned deliberation?
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1/3 Objective values and morality
I read the strongly stated and confident posts offered by Solar and Ree with interest and amusement.
T]here is no basis for “deciding” who is correct or who is not in our current set of discussions. These are all just opinions and each of us pats ourselves on the back and declares ourselves “winner.”
Compare with the empirical world.
I take out my chain saw. It starts or it doesn’t start. When it doesn’t, I take it to the shop and they fix it or they don’t. Most of the time, the answer is YES it has been fixed. Once in a while it is NO it hasn’t. It’s not very subjective.
I get sick. I go to the doctor. He gives me advice and/or a prescription. My blood pressure goes down or my fever breaks or it doesn’t. Of course, all of this gets complicated and ambiguous, but at any point in the process we are evaluating on empirical data.
When we talk about good or bad, there is no basis for evaluation besides our subjective opinions. If you appeal to God, God is silent and apparently has been since the days of the Bible. There are perhaps 60 to 150 churches (not all Christian, but most) on Whidbey Island. Each Sunday, I could go to a different church and hear different opinions on what is “true” in regard to religion and morality.
I think the theory of evolution (though not completely documented or understood) is basically a “true” description of how human beings came to be. Most people on Wandering Views (I think it safe to say) do not. You believe the story of Adam and Eve more accurately explains where human beings came from. In Whidbey’s churches, you will find supporters of both points of view.
I find homosexual marriage acceptable. I don’t find sexual relations with children acceptable and I don’t find sexual relations with animals acceptable. I find group marriage among consenting adults acceptable (though where offspring of such families are involved) I am very uneasy.
Over history and over various cultures there has been some consistent trends, but huge variations. Solomon’s wives are one obvious example (of many) of multiple partners (usually female, though there are occasional examples, in Tibet, for example) of women having multiple husbands.
As far as I can tell without huge study, there is nothing in the Bible decreeing an “age of consent” or something equivalent, and I suspect it would not be hard to find examples of very young women being married and impregnated in Biblical times and in times and cultures throughout human history. Our finicky discrimination about age of consent is a fairly recent phenomenon as far as I can tell.
Where are we going with this? Whether religious people or secular people are running society we have a fair amount of fairly peaceful and happy life (most of the time), yet quite a bit of suffering and miserable life much of the time. There are no religious utopias and there are no secular utopias. Either the purpose of life is to suffer and go to Heaven (if you believe), or there is no purpose to life and we just do the best we can and make the most of it. Christians, you have had 2,000 years to establish your point if there is some reason for life on earth. I see no reason to expect you will do any better in the unlikely event humans have another 2,000 years. I have no reason to expect secularist will do any better. Life is a -itch; then you die.
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Morality and objectivity 2/3
From wikipedia:
Traditionally, across the globe, the age of consent for a sexual union was a matter for the family to decide, or a tribal custom. In most cases, this coincided with signs of puberty,menstruation for a woman and pubic hair for a man.
Hesiod in “Works and Days” (circa 700BC) suggests that a man should marry around the age of thirty, and that he should take a wife who is five years past puberty. In Ancient Rome, it was very common for girls to marry and have children shortly after the onset of puberty.
The first recorded age-of-consent law dates back 800 years: In 1275, in England, as part of the rape law, a statute, Westminster 1, made it a misdemeanor to “ravish” a “maiden within age,” whether with or without her consent. The phrase “within age” was interpreted by jurist Sir Edward Coke as meaning the age of marriage, which at the time was 12 years of age.
In the 12th century Gratian, the influential founder of Canon law in medieval Europe, accepted age of puberty for marriage to be between 12 and 14 but acknowledged consent to be meaningful if the children were older than 7. There were authorities that said that consent could take place earlier. Marriage would then be valid as long as neither of the two parties annulled the marital agreement before reaching puberty, or if they had already consummated the marriage. It should be noted that Judges honored marriages based on mutual consent at ages younger than 7, in spite of what Gratian had said; there are recorded marriages of 2 and 3 year olds.
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Morality and objectivity 3/3
Christians have been arguing (in general) fairly reasonable arguments about right and wrong for over 2,000 years. People have been “sinning” for all that time. People in general have been passing laws and trying to make society better for that length of time. Fairly recently, secular people have tried to create utopias or at least good societies for a few hundred years, with not much more (if any) success.
Cheryl said:
If an act by another person brings us pain but brings that person pleasure, we can’t even judge, let alone punish. We can, I suppose, show them what pain “feels like,” but not because they deserve it. If there is no right and wrong, we cannot say either that what they did was “wrong” or whether punishment is right or wrong. Every man for himself, everyone doing what is right in his own eyes. .
So, what’s your point? We have been judging and punishing for thousands of years. On balance, we have to have some such system; no rules, no judgments, no punishments would not work. But it never really solves anything in this world. At best it keeps it from being worse.
Peter says: God has a name for the psychopath’s problem. It’s called sin. Oh, and it’s a problem all of us are born with. God also has a solution to the sin problem. It’s called the propitiatory sacrifice of his Son, Jesus, on the cross. Believe it or not, it is the truth. .
As far as I can see, this is not a “solution” in this life. It may or not be a “solution” in some after death life you believe exists and I don’t. To me, there is not the slightest evidence for this. In a few years, I will find out (as you believe) or I will not exist and will know nothing, (as I believe and reconcile myself to because I find no choice and find no benefit in believing in something I regard as imaginary in empirical terms and offensive and repulsive in philosophical terms).
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“So what’s your point …” is erroneously in italic and is not part of the quote from Cheryl, but is in fact my raving, so don’t blame her, please.
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Solar writes To have your moral reasoning dictated to you by chemistry and not arrived at by careful thought and reasoned deliberation?
1. Human life is awful. That’s why a lot of secular people say, “Life is an -itch and then we die” and a lot of religious people pray all the time and believe in an imaginary God and an imaginary Heaven.
2. Who decides what is “careful thought and reasoned deliberation?”
You say, “My thought is “careful thought and reasoned deliberation.” I think you are a fairly intelligent and coherent person, but my opinion is that your basic assumptions are so faulty that your conclusions go off the rails.
So you say I am correct, correct, correct and you say we [wessili and I] are wrong, wrong, wrong. In the echo chamber of wandering views, lots of people say Solar is correct, correct, correct, though I suspect most say, this is boring, boring, boring.
In the society as a whole your point of view is slowly dissolving and disappearing (though not especially being replaced by something more wonderful).
I think you are wrong, wrong, wrong. There is no objective all-knowing judge to declare a winner, or if there is one, He has decided to remain silent. Perhaps God finds us too tedious and boring to be of interest. Maybe he is readying a new flood. Maybe Kim in North Korea is his Antichrist.
For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. KJV (1611): 2 John 7.
Soon as God gets around to inspiring Kim and his mad scientists on how to fiish their nuclear weapons and get enough delivery vehicle to Nuke the United States, it’s all over for the world.
When the Roman empire shall have ceased, then the Antichrist will be openly revealed and will sit in the House of the Lord in Jerusalem. While he is reigning, two very famous men, Elijah and Enoch, will go forth to announce the coming of the Lord. Antichrist will kill them and after three days they will be raised up by the Lord. Then there will be a great persecution, such as has not been before nor shall be thereafter. The Lord will shorten those days for the sake of the elect, and the Antichrist will be slain by the power of God through Michael the Archangel on the Mount of Olives.
This sounds very objective, empirical, and certain. Sleep well, everybody.
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Lots of typos there. I apologize. I hope everybody has a good day tomorrow. I hope Solar, Ree, Peter, and Cheryl have a good day. I doubt the world will end. Tomorrow. Wednesday, I’m not so sure. Remember the Simon and Garfunkel song?
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2. Who decides what is “careful thought and reasoned deliberation?”
Not relevant to the discussion at all. The point is, in your materialistic view, there IS no thought and reasoning, only chemical processes. I’d bet this has been pointed out to you quite a few times.
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“I tend to view the correctional system as useful for protection from violent criminals who don’t posses empathy.”
Well, useful might be a good thing or might not. Does the person deserve to be locked away from society for lacking some trait other people have? Should we also lock up blind people and deaf people, or people missing limbs?
Even a fairly young child understands the idea of justice. We would never lock up a two-year-old who killed her mother by giving her poison or even stabbing her with a butcher knife. Why? We know that a two-year-old has no possible understanding of choosing to kill someone, that such a killing is not “murder.” She was playing with some liquid she found and she poured it in her mom’s juice, and her mom died. Or she was playing with a knife she found, and by some grotesque accident she killed her mother. She is not “guilty” and does not deserve punishment. It would be unjust to lock her up.
It is also unjust to lock up someone who is not morally guilty solely to be “useful” to others. Now, we might possibly keep someone who is dangerous to self and others in a safe environment (a mental facility), but punishing a person who is not guilty is treacherous. And choosing which traits we like or don’t like, outside right and wrong, is where cultures end up making gross errors that we read about in history books.
But see, that’s the problem . . . we lose the ability even to call it “wrong” to punish the person, if nothing is actually right or wrong. There is no good reason not to lock up all black people or all Jews or all women (or to kill all undesired babies within the womb, or all old or handicapped people who can no longer “contribute” according to some arbitrary standard), if “power to do so” is the only determining factor.
I don’t want to live in a world without recognized (objective) standards of right and wrong, and I really don’t think you would either.
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It’s difficult to find experienced people in this particular subject, but you sound like you know what you’re talking
about! Thanks Cedric
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