Via Pam’s House Blend… The next time you hear someone in the Catholic Church complaining that proposition 8 supporters are being targeted, laugh in their face…
Father Geoffrey Farrow, the Fresno priest who came out against Prop 8 during Mass and was suspended for following his conscience by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is still being hounded by the church.
Since he was out of a job, you’d think the church would be satisfied that Farrow would seek employment elsewhere and fade from its PR radar. Think again. Father Geoff applied for a position with the Los Angeles branch of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) and look at the thuggery of the Church in action. Father Tony at The Bilerico Project and at his pad:
CLUE derives a significant part of its funding from the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Today I spoke with a member of CLUE’s board of directors, Rev. James Conn, a Methodist minister and Director of New Ministries for the California-Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Church. Reverend Conn had been directly involved in the recruitment and interview process involving Father Geoff.
I asked him if CLUE had denied Father Geoff a second interview specifically because the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles threatened to cut off all its significant funding for CLUE should Father Geoff ever be offered the position in question.
As incredible as it may seem, Reverend Conn confirmed the truth of this and expressed his heartfelt disappointment over the fact that CLUE had to choose between continuing the interview process with an extremely promising and qualified candidate or risk losing the financial support of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles that is critical to CLUE’s work.
…I am writing this because I’ve learned over the years that the Roman Catholic Church gets away with this kind of despicable and inhumane treatment of men who choose to follow their conscience only when its bad deeds are not held up to a strong light. Father Geoff does not wish CLUE to lose its funding and therefore has remained silent about this, but his friends have brought this situation to my attention, and I want Catholics in California and beyond to understand clearly the level of unchristian behavior and deliberate malice of which their bishops and cardinals are capable.
More from the Bilerico Project blog…
It is important to note that at the age of 51, after having devoted 23 years of his life to the Roman Catholic Church plus an earlier 7 years in the seminary, Father Geoff has had his medical benefits discontinued and is without income and assistance from his bishop. While it is disgusting that his bishop has turned his back on Father Geoff, it is infuriating to think that his bishop would conspire with the Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles to block gainful and appropriate employment.
I am well familiar with the jargon of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. They will say that they feel compassion for Father Geoff and that they pray for him, but their actions speak too strongly and demonstrate deliberate malice. They do not wish him well. And, God forbid that they should have ever proactively attempted some sort of out-placement effort on his behalf. Some bishops privately do that on behalf of priests who leave, but not the hard-hearted bishop who cut off Father Geoffrey Farrow nor the malicious Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles.
I am writing this because I’ve learned over the years that the Roman Catholic Church gets away with this kind of despicable and inhumane treatment of men who choose to follow their conscience only when its bad deeds are not held up to a strong light. Father Geoff does not wish CLUE to lose its funding and therefore has remained silent about this, but his friends have brought this situation to my attention, and I want Catholics in California and beyond to understand clearly the level of unchristian behavior and deliberate malice of which their bishops and cardinals are capable.
I hope you will consider going to CLUE’s website and leaving them a message about your feelings (please keep in mind that CLUE wanted to continue its interview with Father Geoff so don’t paint them as the "bad guy". If you want to leave a message for the real "bad guy", you may contact the office of Cardinal Roger Mahony.
Archdiocese of Los Angeles
3424 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90010-2202
213 637 7000
info@la-archdiocese.org
Ask them why they hate Father Geoff. When they assure you that they do not hate him, ask them to prove it and soon. Right now, more than their insincere prayers, he needs a job.
I hope nobody is surprised. When you hear the Proposition 8 supporters talk of civility and mutual respect, laugh in their face.
I hadn’t known this, but the other day on Fark.Com one of the headlines read that January is National Drag History Month. As a gay man who tends to favor somewhat androgynous males, I have to admit that some of these performers just knock me out. That’s not to say I like it when guys dress up as girls, so much as when guys can be sexy and sultry and beautiful. There’s an art to this that I never really appreciated when I was younger, and stereotyped drag as an artifact of gay repression. You can certainly view it that way. But in a more liberated time, you can also view it as a kind of subversive gender-bending art that is beautiful and sexy for its own sake.
Some drag performers don’t have it. They just look like guys wearing dresses. But some guys have got it going on. One commenter on Fark said that a boy in a dress is just a boy in a dress.
No… Not at all…
…not at all.
So… Happy National Drag History Month Mrs Cuba…aka Deanna Lexington. Wish my friends down there hadn’t been such a bunch of jackass knuckle-dragging dickheads and let me have a chance to meet you last year. But if you happen to chance across this post…I have some more photos from that Academy of Washington D.C. Miss Gaye Universe Ball. It was nice to see you get an award. Personally, I thought you should have taken it all.
In the wake of the passage of Proposition 8, and predictably, you heard the voices from the back bench bellyaching that we were all fighting the wrong fight. Why are we making such a big deal out of marriage they asked, when we still lack basic anti discrimination protections in jobs and housing? Why are we putting so much energy into a fight about same-sex marriage, which most of the country is against anyway, when gay people can still be fired from their jobs, denied housing, denied service in stores and restaurants? Let’s fight for the basics first, they say.
Equality Utah’s Common Ground Initiative — a push for legal protections for gay and transgender Utahns — has drawn hundreds of marchers to a Capitol Hill rally, thousands of petition signatures and even broad-based support in statewide opinion polls.
The initiative also has ignited a backlash, led by defenders of "traditional marriage" who want to crush the effort.
Rather than "common ground," Gayle Ruzicka and the Constitutional Defense of Marriage Alliance are touting "common sense." And a Salt Lake City-based conservative think tank, The Sutherland Institute, wants Utahns to stand on "sacred ground" instead.
"The family is the central unit of society, and so our efforts in this regard are ultimately to protect the traditional family and protect marriage," said Sutherland spokesman Jeff Reynolds, who acknowledged Equality Utah has run a "very effective" campaign.
Next week, his group will kick off its Sacred Ground Initiative, a counteroffensive aimed at defeating the five gay-rights bills, all sponsored by Democratic lawmakers, that make up the Common Ground Initiative.
"The message [from opponents] is that our bills are an attack on marriage — which is exactly what they’re not," said Will Carlson, Equality Utah’s public-policy manager. The proposed laws range from protecting someone from being fired for being gay to establishing a statewide domestic-partner registry that would afford some legal protections, such as hospital visitation, to same-sex couples.
Emphasis mine. Here’s why we’re fighting for same-sex marriage. Because every fight we’ve ever waged as a people has been turned into a fight over same-sex marriage by our enemies. Watch it happen again in the fight for these so-called "common ground" gay rights bills in Utah. Just like it’s happened every time since the days of Antia Bryant and Save Our Children in Florida.
It’s ironic that the bigots understand our fight better then many of us do. The same logic that says it’s wrong to deny a gay man a job simply because he is a gay man, what do you know, leads in a straight and narrow path to the conclusion that it is also wrong to deny a gay man the right to marry the man he loves, simply because both of them are gay. To concede it in the one case is to concede it in the other. Though our enemies deny that rhetorically, you can see they know it perfectly well by how they turn every fight we engage in, for every meager right that heterosexuals take for granted every day, into a fight over same-sex marriage.
Deemphasize same-sex marriage all you want. Our enemies will underline it in neon. The homosexuals aren’t just fighting for the right to hold down a job. The homosexuals aren’t just fighting for equal housing. The homosexuals aren’t just fighting for the right to adopt. The homosexuals aren’t just fighting for safe schools. The homosexuals aren’t just fighting for the right to serve in the military. The homosexuals aren’t just fighting to repeal the sodomy laws. The homosexuals are fighting to make their perversion morally acceptable. They are fighting for the honor and the dignity of their perverted sexual relationships.
Yes. Yes we are. That’s the heart of it. Marriage isn’t central to this fight, but it’s damn close. Closer then anything else in civil law. If our sexual relationships are morally and civilly the equal of heterosexuals’ then not only is there no reason to deny us a job, there is no reason to deny us the right to marry. That is why every fight in this struggle, is a fight over same-sex marriage.
Germans looking to live out their Wild West fantasies of being a gunslinging cowboy or Indian are in luck: the Karl May festival in Bad Segeberg needs experienced horseback riders as extras for this summer’s performance.
New festival director Donald Kraemer plans to begin rehearsals of the open-air stage adaptation of the classic Karl May novel Der Schatz im Silbersee, or Treasure of Silver Lake, in late May.
Some years ago on one of my road trips as I was driving near Bryce Canyon, I noticed every curio shop and trading post I stopped at all had their prices and item tags on everything in the windows, display cases, and on the clothing racks written in German. This kept happening all the way from Bryce Canyon to Monument Valley, where I finally crossed paths with a huge, and I mean Huge, caravan of tour buses, all loaded to the brims with middle aged German tourists.
Nice folk…passionately curious about everything around them…pleasant, polite, cameras clicking away. But they spoke not much if any English at all and stayed close to their tour guides…which makes me wonder to this day about the stories I keep hearing about how English is widely understood in Germany. I happen to catch one of them, a pleasant enough German man, taking a snapshot of my car’s license plate.
I have the special "Preserve The Bay" plates which you pay extra for, and the money goes into a fund to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay. It’s distinguished from the standard plates by the state waterfowl, the Great Blue Heron. When the German saw me watching him taking a picture of my plates, he became visibly embarrassed and made a gesture toward the car I took to mean he wanted me to know he was just snapping a tourist photo. I smiled back and wished I could tell him the plate was a special edition and the facts behind it, but all we could do was smile at each across the language barrier.
I’ve tried to read Karl May. I can’t. To an American boy who grew up reading Louis L’amour, May is simply unreadable, and I don’t think it’s because the translations are bad, or that he just didn’t know or understand the West. Let it be said, those other American icons of Western storytelling, Zane Grey and James Fenimore Cooper, were no better then May in that regard, and had less of an excuse because they actually lived on this side of the pond.
Grey was the better romantic though. My first and only walk with Zane Grey through the American West of his imagination, began on the first pages of Lone Star Ranger…
If Bain was drunk he didn’t show it in his movement. He swaggered forward, rapidly closing up the gap. Red, sweaty, disheveled, and hatless, his face distorted and expressive of the most malignant intent, he was a wild and sinister figure. He had already killed a man, and this showed in his demeanor. His hands were extended before him, the right hand a little lower then the left. At every step he bellowed his rancor in speech mostly curses. Gradually he slowed his walk, then halted. A good twenty-five paces separated them.
"Won’t nothing make you draw you —!" he shouted, fiercely.
"I’m waiting on you, Cal," replied Duane.
Bain’s right hand stiffened – moved. Duane threw his gun as a boy throws a ball underhand – a draw his father had taught him. He pulled twice, his shots almost as one. Bain’s big Colt boomed while it was pointed downward and he was falling. His bullet scattered dust and gravel and Daune’s feet. He fell loosely, without contortion.
In a flash it all was reality for Duane. He went forward and held his gun ready for the slightest movement on the part of Bain. But Bain lay upon his back, and all that moved were his breast and his eyes. How strangely the red had left his face – and also the distortion. The devil that had showed in Bain was gone. He was sober and conscious. He tried to speak, but failed. His eyes expressed something pitifully human. They changed – rolled – set blankly.
Duane drew a deep breath and sheathed his gun. He felt calm and cool, glad the fray was over. The one violent expression burst from him. "The fool!"
When he looked up there were men around him.
"Plumb center," said one.
Another, a cowboy who evidently had just left the gaming-table, leaned down and pulled open Bain’s shirt. He had the ace of spades in his hand. He laid it on Bain’s breast, and the black figure on the card covered the two bullet-holes just over Bain’s heart…
This is why Zane Grey became so popular, and why his American West came to define the real West for generations. That last little touch with the gambler placing an Ace of Spades over the bullet holes is great stuff. But it didn’t compare to Louis L’amour, and I put the book down and never picked it back up. Louis L’amour could paint a scary picture of a bad guy with just a few deft sentences of description, not all this face distorted and expressive of the most malignant intent, he was a wild and sinister figure crap. You got the feeling reading L’amour that you were really there to see it all, not that you were watching it on Saturday morning TV.
May, at least in translation, writes a lot like Grey and Cooper, which is why I can’t read him. And his West, and Grey’s, and Cooper’s just isn’t real. But sometimes real isn’t what’s wanted. You want the myth. You want the high opera. You want to see the struggle between good and evil drawn out in sharp, bold strokes because that story Is more then the sum of its real life parts. Art, Picasso said, is a lie that makes us see the truth. One of these days I have to go see that Karl May festival for myself, and the German cowboys and German indians that gather there to pow-wow…
The Weather In Baltimore, For My Family Out In California Where They Don’t Have “Weather”…
Looks like we’re finally going to get a good snowing in this season. The sidewalks and streets in my little Baltimore neighborhood were covered with the white powdery stuff this morning, but not very deep. It’s sticking though, and they’re calling for it to keep on coming down all day and into tomorrow, when for our wintery pleasure it will turn to freezing rain. Swell.
The trick now is to not clean your car off as the snow falls, because when the freezing rain comes down on top of that it’ll be real easy to get the ice off. Just bang your hand on the sheet of ice on top of the snow and crack it apart. Then it’ll just slide off the snow, and off the car and you won’t have to scrape it off. Some years ago when I lived in Cockeysville, a helpful neighbor cleaned the snow off my car one afternoon when they were calling for a freezing rain that night. I wanted to throttle him, but I’m a wuss and I just planted a smile on my face and tried to explain to him that he’d just created a lot of ice scraping fun for both of us the next morning. Surprisingly, the look on his face when it dawned on him was not very satisfying.
I got my winter hat in the mail, just in time for the snow. The rabbit fur ear liner is very nice…but it seems a tad big somehow. It fits fine and snug around my head but comes down really low to my brow. I don’t think a smaller size would fit around my head, but I’m not used to having a hat come down that far to my brow either. So maybe I mis-measured my head.
The eternal problem with singleness: It’s hard to measure yourself. Inside and out. Which is why we need companionship. More for the inside then the outside, although having someone to take your measure on the outside can be handy from time to time too. It’s not good to be only seeing yourself inside of mirrors. You need to see yourself in another person’s smile every now and then too.
The You Can Marry Anyone Of The Opposite Sex You Want Argument
I’ve considered this one a good test of mendacious jerk factor ever since I ran into a particularly loathsome creep on Usenet named Steve Fordyce, whose favorite hobby horse it was…
The marriage laws do not discriminate against homosexuals.
They have the same right to marry a person of the opposite
sex that heterosexuals do.
Now, everybody…including the bigots who make this argument by the way…know that this is a bogus argument. Let’s apply it to a different set of people…
Laws that prohibit the practice of Judaism do
not discriminate against Jews, since
Christians have to obey those laws too.
The problem is it sounds perfectly logical. How can you argue that treating people the same is discrimination? But it’s a fallacy of ambiguity. To say that you are treating everyone the same is not to say you are treating everyone equitably. The trick here is that a word is being used in two different senses at the same time. Look at this again…
The marriage laws do not discriminate against homosexuals.
They have the same right to marry a person of the opposite
sex that heterosexuals do.
The problem is with the word ‘discriminate’. In this statement, it is being used in two difference senses at the same time. Let’s look at its definition. This one I took from The Free Dictionary…
discriminate
Verb
[-nating, -nated]
1. to make a distinction against or in favor of a particular person or group
2. to recognize or understand a difference: to discriminate between right and wrong [Latin discriminare to divide]
So in the one sense, yes, the law makes no distinction between gay and straight. But it does not follow then, that the second sense of the word ‘discriminate’, to make a distinction against or in favor of a particular person or group is also not true. Let’s rephrase it…
The marriage laws do not distinguish between homosexuals
and heterosexuals. They give homosexuals the same
right to marry a person of the opposite sex they give
to heterosexuals.
This statement is both true and much clearer now as to adverse discrimination, in the first sense of the word, that homosexuals endure even though they are not being discriminated in the second sense of the word. Let’s try it another way.
The marriage laws treat homosexuals and heterosexuals
equally. Both groups have exactly the same right to marry
a person of the opposite sex.
Here the ambiguity is on the word ‘equally’. Once again, it is being used in two difference senses at the same time…
Equally
adj.
1. Having the same quantity, measure, or value as another.
2. Mathematics Being the same or identical to in value.
3.
a. Having the same privileges, status, or rights: equal before the law.
b. Being the same for all members of a group: gave every player an equal chance to win.
4.
a. Having the requisite qualities, such as strength or ability, for a task or situation: "Elizabeth found herself quite equal to the scene"Jane Austen.
b. Adequate in extent, amount, or degree.
5. Impartial; just; equitable.
6. Tranquil; equable.
7. Showing or having no variance in proportion, structure, or appearance.
n.
One that is equal to another: These two models are equals in computing power.
tr.v.e·qualed or e·qualled, e·qual·ing or e·qual·ling, e·quals
1. To be equal to, especially in value.
2. To do, make, or produce something equal to: equaled the world record in the mile run.
‘Equally’ is being used to mean both Having the same privileges, status, or rights: equal before the lawandImpartial; just; equitable. But one does not necessarily follow from the other. Let’s rephrase it…
The marriage laws treat homosexuals as if they were heterosexuals
and give them the same right to marry a person of the opposite
sex that they give to heterosexuals.
Now the problem is more clearly understood. The marriage laws deny that gay people even exist.
The fallacy is one of equivocation. It is using a word in two different senses, to prove a conclusion that does not follow from the stated premise, simply because the same word appears in both the premise and the conclusion.
A feather is light.
What is light, cannot be dark.
See how that works? Now look at this…
Marriage laws do not discriminate between homosexuals and heterosexuals.
Therefore marriage laws do not discriminate against homosexuals.
It simply does not follow. Yes, the law does not discriminate between gay and straight. It does not follow that the law does not discriminate against gay people.
Nobody makes this argument honestly. Nobody. This is bad faith on its face. When you hear someone making this argument, you know you are dealing with either a bigot or an ass, and usually both.
Another Valentine’s Day spam arrived in the mail today…this time from Harry & David…
From: "Harry & David"
To: bgarrett@pobox.com
Subject: Perfect match: Gifts as extraordinary as your Valentine.
Show your affection with our sophisticated confections
==================================
Love, Sweet Love ...
What the world REALLY needs now!
==================================
They'll know you're all heart when you send an
exclusive Harry & David Valentine treat.
Sweets from the Heart $24.95
Sweets from the Heart with Wine $59.95
Restrictions apply. Void where prohibited by law. See details here:
Hello… Is this Harry or David? Yes…I’d like to order a bottle of vinegar and a lovely bouquet of ragweed and barbed wire. Send it to Cupid…wherever the hell he lives. The gift card should read… Hello…? Hello…?
I’m such a sourpuss this time of year…for some reason…
I’ll Take The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same For 1000 Alex…
Via Brad DeLong… Now I see that the republican bellyaching over contraceptives is even more dishonest then just their usual crude sexual mores posturing…
Bad Faith Economics: As the debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: many of the plan’s opponents aren’t arguing in good faith…. John Boehner, the House minority leader, has already made headlines with one such shot: looking at an $825 billion plan to rebuild infrastructure, sustain essential services and more, he derided a minor provision that would expand Medicaid family-planning services — and called it a plan to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives.”…
Emphasis mine. And it get’s better…
[T]he bogus talking point that the Obama plan will cost $275,000 per job created…. It’s as if an opponent of the school lunch program were to take an estimate of the cost of that program over the next five years, then divide it by the number of lunches provided in just one of those years, and assert that the program was hugely wasteful, because it cost $13 per lunch. (The actual cost of a free school lunch, by the way, is $2.57.)…
Nice. They keep this up throughout the recession and they’ll be lucky if they get more votes next election then Lyndon LaRouche.
I’ve never bought the idea that opposition to abortion is solely about controlling women’s bodies. I’ve just known too many people who were genuinely sincere in their religious beliefs that abortion is wrong. But I’ve seen little evidence that conservatives’ hostility to contraception, to methods that prevent unwanted pregnancies and therefore abortions, from taking place, could be anything else. Steve Benenwrites, via Elana Schor, that Republicans are opposed to money in the stimulus bill that would help state governments assist low-income women in getting contraception coverage:
…
Beyond the fact that this policy would save the government money in the long run (a finding from the same office that didn’t produce that report on the stimulus), are Republicans really arguing that unwanted pregnancies don’t result in a significant financial burden for families that are already struggling in an economy that’s likely to get worse? What’s the moral justification for denying them the choice of preventing pregnancies they don’t want? That having sex should be predicated on yearly income?
Yes.
This has been another edition of Simple Answers, To Simple Questions…
This is the first winter that the outdoor cold has been able to keep me inside despite cabin fever. I want to go out for a walk, but every time I go to the door and step outside to check the weather, something inside of me just wants to go crawl back into bed and wait for spring.
I run CentOS 5.2 here on Mowgli, the main workstation here at Casa del Garrett. Those of you who’ve been with me for a while, may remember my "Clawing My Way To Linuxville" series of posts. So far, I’ve been enormously happy with CentOS, which is basically Redhat Enterprise but without the proprietary Redhat parts. Linux nowadays seems to be a perfectly acceptable replacement for Windows in a lot of applications. So I was unimpressed, to say the least, to read all this over on Slashdot a moment ago…
An anonymous reader writes "In a recent Computerworld interview, Linus revealed that he’s switched to Gnome — this despite launching a heavily critical broadside against Gnome just a few years ago. His reason? He thinks KDE 4 is a ‘disaster.’ Although it’s improved recently, he’ll find many who agree with this prognosis, and KDE 4 can be painful to use." There’s quite a bit of interesting stuff in this interview, besides, regarding the current state of Linux development.
KDE and Gnome the two popular graphical user interfaces for Linux. Think of them as the Windows part of Microsoft Windows. Reading the Slashdot user comments about KDE debacle put me in mind of the disaster that was Windows’ Vista, but on a smaller scale. This only affects one windowing system…the other is apparently still stable and usable. But many Linux users find Gnome to be much too simplistic. I use KDE myself, largely because of it’s flexibility and it’s feature depth. I particularly like the copy buffer icon on the taskbar. I use that a lot because the Linux copy buffer is not nearly as smoothly integrated with everything else as the Windows and Mac copy buffers are. That’s the difference between Open Source and proprietary. In Open Source land you have a lot of different people all doing their own thing while still trying to get along with each other somehow.
I’ve been unaffected by this KDE issue. CentOS isn’t bleeding edge Linux. Sometimes that means there are features missing from it that the more trendy Linux distributions have. But it is very stable and usable and that’s why I’ve kept with it. That they have waited for KDE 4 to get itself sorted out before pushing it out to their user base really impresses me a lot now. I had no idea all this was going on over in KDE-land and that’s because the CentOS software updates never forced it on me. If my Linux desktop had broken the way some of these Slashdot commenters are complaining about I’d have been furious.
What you need to understand about Linux, for those of you still a bit mystified by it, is that Linux is just a kernel. The kernel is the most basic part of a computer operating system…it’s the low level functionality that manages memory, input-output, loads and runs applications, and so on. The part you and I interact with is called the Shell. A shell can be a simple text based command-line or it can be a dazzling graphical interface with Windows and sound effects and all sorts of eye candy. But basically the shell is the user interface…the part that allows you to tell the kernel what you want it to do, and get messages back from the kernel about what it’s doing. There are also other "layers" that control things like the network connections and video display. Think of all this as layers of an onion, with the user interface, the part you and I see, at the top and the kernel at the bottom, right next to the actual hardware which is at the very center. That’s your computer the way the software running on it sees it.
Linux is just the kernel part. Everything else is the layer stuff added onto it. That layer stuff is usually packaged into "distributions" so you and I don’t have to spend hours if not days building everything ourselves from the kernel out. Popular distributions are Redhat, SuSE, Madriva, Ubuntu, Debian. There are tons of others, including such as "Scientific Linux" which some folks at work use, and Kbuntu, which is Ubuntu disaffected. Each Linux distribution, or "distro", builds up and tweaks the layers in its own way. Some are more targeted toward server usage. Some, like Ubuntu, target the desktop user. The thing to keep in mind is that they’re all different takes on how to build a complete operating system from the basic Linux kernel.
As I said, I run the CentOS distro nowadays. It’s not nearly as trendy as Ubuntu, and there have been times I’ve been disappointed that it lags well behind other Linux distributions in terms of features and supported applications (I still can’t get the Amazon mp3 downloader to work on it) But CentOS is a very stable platform to be running on, which I really appreciate. I can do most everything I need to do on it, and what I can’t do on CentOS I can on one of my household Macs. So I don’t need Windows anymore. I have an XP license for Mowgli that I haven’t booted up in almost a year. Its security patches are so out of date now that I’m almost afraid to.
CentOS, as I said, is Redhat Enterprise without the Redhat proprietary parts. It’s all open source and "free" software. The other thing you need to understand about Linux, is the Open Source part. Open Source is free as in "free beer", but more critically to those of us who work with computers for a living, Open Source is free as in freedom. That Windows XP license I have is a good example of what I mean.
I had to rebuild Mowgli some time ago, when its motherboard failed. XP uses an online license branding scheme that only unlocks Windows for use if you have a valid license key. When you install it on a computer, you have to give it your key and it phones back to Redmond to verify that the key is genuine. Then it grabs the serial number off your CPU, and the mac number off your network card and a few other unique IDs from various hardware components and then it computes a "brand" for your individual machine which it then encrypts and records somewhere. Whenever you start Windows up it checks the brand against the hardware to make sure it’s still running on the same machine you installed it on.
Suppose you have a hardware failure and you have to replace something with one of those unique IDs the brand was generated against? XP will know when you boot it up after replacing hardware, that something changed. So long as your license key was valid, it will simply recompute the brand. But only up to two times. After that, you must call Microsoft and ask for permission to reinstall XP. You have to call Microsoft in other words, and convince the droid you’re talking to that you’re not pirating their software by copying it onto more machines then you bought a license for.
This is simply not an issue with Open Source software. Your machine breaks…just fix it and re-install Linux. Replace a motherboard? No problem. Need more power? No problem. Go ahead and upgrade anything on your machine. Replace that memory. Get a new video card. Get a faster network card. Upgrade the whole motherboard. It doesn’t matter. Need a second machine? Fine. Go ahead and install your copy of Linux on that one too. Go ahead and give a copy to all your friends for that matter. It’s no problem.
As a software engineer whose career has shifted a tad away from coding applications to designing and integrating systems, I’ve seen over and over how restrictive licensing demands from commercial vendors stifle productivity and innovation. And it’s making people switch to Open Source more and more. At the Open Source Developer’s Conference in Portland last year, a group of folks from one NASA project focused on satellite image analyis, told us how they chose several Open Source development platforms to do their experiments on, specifically because they knew they’d eventually have to scale them up to more powerful computers and they didn’t want to have to deal with re-licensing and re-branding their software every time they upgraded their hardware. Now whenever they need to upgrade the hardware they just pick their software up and plop it down on the new hardware and that’s that. Free software is about Freedom, not free as in getting something for nothing.
Some commercial Linux distros are trying to take a more Microsoft approach to their business model, and have instituted a limited software branding scheme. They do that mostly to sell their maintenance services to the business community. Redhat Enterprise now brands itself in a way similar to Windows XP. But you don’t need to bother with Redhat unless you are a business and you would rather use their technical support then your own in-house IT staff to maintain your workstations. Linux and other Open Source software is typically distributed under a license that allows anyone to use the software and freely incorporate it into their own proprietary software products, so long as the Open Source part remains open and freely re-distributable.
That is how CentOS can distribute a Linux version that is almost Identical to Redhat Enterprise. It is basically all the open source parts of Redhat enterprise, without any of the the proprietary Redhat stuff in it. So it’s missing, basically, the Redhat installer, the Redhat software updater, and a few other proprietary Redhat componants. Open Source replacements exist for all those proprietary componants, so this is no problem. You are completely on your own in terms of support…but that’s the other side of the freedom coin. If you need support, then you can always buy a commercial distro. End user licenses for those are usually a lot less expensive then a Windows license anyway.
A co-worker says that Open Source suffers from the "too many cooks" problem, and he’s right to a degree. But this disaster with KDE just goes to show how that can be a protection from the one dictatorial grand and glorious vision that turns out to be crap…like Windows Vista. No one company controls Linux. Linus Torvalds still controls the Kernel he started so many years ago as a student project. But the Linux kernel is one part of an Open Source community of people and software. It’s not the whole thing that’s suddenly gone bad now, like Windows Vista, just one Open Source component, and there are actually many alternatives you can use in the meantime, Gnome being only one. Freedom can be messy. So many people going in so many different directions. But that’s a good thing.
There Can Be No Morality Without Religion…(continued)
Via Sullivan… Pope Ratzinger welcomes into his fold, a bishop who claims the Holocaust never happened…
Pope lifts excommunications of 4 bishops
Pope Benedict XVI has lifted the excommunications of four bishops consecrated without papal consent 20 years ago by the late French ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Vatican announced Saturday.
One of the four bishops was shown this week in an interview saying that the Nazi gas chambers probably didn’t exist. The report prompted Rome’s chief rabbi to ask the Vatican to halt plans to rehabilitate him.
Lefebvre rebelled against the Vatican’s modernizing reforms of the 1960s, including replacing Latin with local languages at Mass.
Benedict has already reached out to the rebels in the hopes of bringing them back into the Church by making it the old Mass more readily available.
"The Holy Father in this decision was inspired by the wish that full reconciliation and full communion can be achieved soon," the Vatican said.
Richard Williamson said in a Swedish state TV interview that historical evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed." The Vatican had no comment on the report.
Traditionalist bishop: ‘There were no gas chambers’
Bishop Richard Williamson is a hardline ultra-conservative bishop of the Society of St Pius X. He is excommunicated from the RC church, along with his three brother SSPX bishops but as we report, and also according to reports coming out of Rome, the excommunications could be lifted soon by the Pope. It could even be lifted by Sunday, according to the usually reliable Rorate Caeli. And that while he faces possible prosecution for Holocaust denial in Germany after an interview with a reporter from Swedish TV in which he claimed that six million Jews did not die in the Holocaust, merely a few thousand, and that the gas chambers did not exist. CathCon has the translation of the Der Spiegel report and more on the likely lifting of those excommunications. Could the clock really be turned back this far on Nostra Aetate and the teachings of Vatican II?
In an earlier story in the Catholic Herald, Bishop Williamson was exposed as endorsing the forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion…
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If he brings them back in with Williamson on board, then truly it will be a disaster. Vatican II might as well never have happened and it won’t just be the Jewish community that would be justifiably disgusted. For many thousands of lay Catholics the world over, this could be the final proof that what the atheist bus campaign suggested was true: ‘There probably is no God.’ At least not the God that Williamson and his like believe in. Who could blame them, then, if they put traditionalist Catholic guilt aside, and get on and enjoy their lives.
I hope people don’t get it into their heads that this is merely Ratzinger’s German heritage coming to the fore because this sort of thing horrifies a lot of Germans. It’s his fascist soul that’s peeking out now. They say men don’t change, they just reveal themselves. Well…this is Ratzinger.
…and he’s eminently representative of that vein of fascism in the Catholic church that was not only on Hitler’s side once upon a time, and the Spanish dictator Franco, but actively helped many of his henchmen escape justice after the war. The reason strongly Catholic Spain can have same-sex marriage regardless of what the church thinks of it is because so many Spaniards remember how cozy the Catholic church was with Franco while Spain suffered under his thumb, and they care more about the church keeping its fingers the hell out of their government then what the Pope thinks about anything.
American protestants shouldn’t be feeling too smug about all this either because while there are folks in the Henry Ford heartland who think the Catholic church is the whore of Babylon, they also think Protocols is as literally true as the King James bible. The only reason the kook pews give a good goddamn about Israel is their nutty end times theology. They could care less about the fate of the Jews…they need Israel to exist so the world can end. Then American right wing Jesus will come back to earth and cast them all into the lake of fire along with the other non-believers. And…presumably Catholics. And Mormons for sure. And Unitarians. And Quakers. And the heathens in the church across the street. Especially them.
Hell’s a big place all right. As big as the human capacity to hate each other. As big as our ability to excuse ourselves for killing each other. And heaven is so very small. So very, very small. Just big enough for me…but probably not big enough for you too. And remember…there can be no morality without religion…
Well I installed the new 1 terabyte data drive into Bagheera (the art room computer) and copied the contents of the backup drive back over to it. When that was done I did another Unix diff on the two drives and when it all looked good I restarted Bagheera with the new drive in place. Because last time iTunes had given me the least amount of trouble, I started it up first. As it so happened, this time around it was iTunes that gave me the most trouble, but I eventually got past it.
When I first installed the secondary data drive into Bagheera, I moved my iTunes library over to it on the theory that it having it there would give it space to grow independently of the system drive. Replacing a system drive because you need more space is a bear of a chore, compared to replacing a drive that holds nothing but data. And anyway the iTunes music library is data, as opposed to iTunes itself which is an application, so it belonged on the data drive.
As I recall it, last time I did this I simply went into the iTunes preferences dialogue and re-pointed it to the Music folder on the data drive and everything worked again. This time when I brought Bagheera back up, iTunes had somehow convinced itself that its music library was now on the friggin’ backup drive and pointing it back to the new data drive did not convince it otherwise. How that happened I have no idea. In theory, the music library appeared in both places: the new data drive and the backup drive, which I had not dismounted when I rebooted Bagheera. My guess is the backup drive appeared in the search path first somehow, and iTunes ignored the new drive and automatically re-attached itself to the library on the backup drive. And I could not convince it to go get its music files from the new drive no matter what I did.
After a little digging around online I found out that you have to let iTunes copy its library over to a new drive itself…you can’t just copy it yourself and then point iTunes to the new location. So…first you point iTunes to the new location by going into Preferences and in the Advanced menu change the iTunes Music Folder location. Make sure you have "keep the folder organized" and "copy music into the music folder when adding it to the library" checked. Then you have to go to File -> Library -> Consolidate Library and iTunes will then copy all the music files from the old location to the new.
This was incredibly frustrating as I’d already copied the damn music files…but apparently iTunes now exerts more control over them then it used to…probably to strengthen the DRM technology, although Apple is said to be getting rid of all that soon. You can’t just copy them yourself and tell iTunes where they are now. You have to let iTunes do the copy. So I sat there and watched iTunes copy over every music file I’d already copied over but when it was done it was satisfied and I could play my music again.
Next I fired up Aperture expecting another hassle. See…I’d just replaced a drive is all. When I formatted the new drive I gave it the same volume name as the last one, which is "Bagheera_Data_1". So in theory all the files were in the same location pathwise. If IMAGE_123.tiff was located in /Volumes/Bagheera_Data_1/Photos/Digital/California_2007/IMAGE_123.tiff on the old drive, then on the new drive wouldn’t you know it, it’s located there too. Simple, no? But as I said before, Aperture (and apparently iTunes now) uses a hidden volume serial number to locate where files are, instead of just the volume name. So when I brought up Aperture last time with the new drive mounted it thought it was missing all its master image files, even though no, they were right where they always were, just on a new drive. Why Apple does it this way I have no idea but it’s goddamned frustrating.
And when Aperture came up so slowly that it seemed to have hung I thought for sure I was in trouble. But apparently the Aperture 2 has smarts enough built-in that when it sees its master file references all broken it goes and looks for them in the most logical places…like…oh…the same Unix pathspec as before. Wow…what a concept. But that was why it was so slow coming up apparently, because when it did come up it had found and re-attached all its master image files correctly.
Whew…
While all this was going on I decided to also start the process of migrating the Macs here at Casa del Garrett from OSX 10.4, otherwise known as "Tiger", to OSX 10.5, otherwise known as "Leopard". I decided to use Akela, the 12" G4 Powerbook, as my guinea pig. Akela has several devices installed on it, and some critical software like Photoshop (you are allowed to install one copy of Photoshop on a desktop computer and a laptop so long as both machines are yours). It also had the Wacom tablet installed on it too, for times when I went on a road trip and I wanted to be able keep on doing my cartoons on the road. I wanted to see if a straight system upgrade would break any of my critical applications and the Wacom or not.
I have two Macs here at Casa del Garrett: Akela and Bagheera. So I need two licenses for Leopard. But really, I only need one install disk. So I asked one of the nice Apple droids at the Apple Store at Towson Town Mall if I could buy two licenses on one install media. No, says she, not two…but you can buy a family pack of five licenses. Well, says I, I don’t need five, only two, so I reckon I’ll just buy two individual install discs. Oh, says she, but a family pack costs less then two individual install disks. What???
It’s true. One OSX 10.5 upgrade disc costs $130. A family pack license, which includes the install disk of course, costs $200. So buying five licenses, even though I only need two, saves me $60. Not bad, except I’m wasting three licenses…and before anybody asks, according to the license terms I can’t just give them to anyone who doesn’t actually live under my roof, unless they’re a family member off in school somewhere. But my nephew is running a Windows laptop (which I bought him), so he doesn’t need it. My niece will probably be running a Windows laptop too when it comes her turn. But I have to like Apple for making it cheaper to buy five licenses then two, when they could have just priced the family pack such that it was a deal only if you were going to buy three or more. It saved me $60 bucks.
I backed up Akela and tested the backup by booting off the backup drive before installing Leopard. If this was the only thing Apple did better then Microsoft I’d be running Apple products here at home all the same. Being able to recover from a system disk failure by booting off the backup drive is wonderful. You just can’t do that with Windows…the license branding scheme alone prevents it and Windows has always been funky in the way it uses special hidden files that you can’t copy to a backup drive while its running in order to operate. Unix like systems, which is what MacOS is these days, don’t do that to you. At some point I’d like to get something like that going on Mowgli, but booting off a USB drive on an Intel box is more problematical. I don’t think Mowgli’s current hardware allows it. On the Mac you can boot off of external Firewire drives, but at least on the PowerPC machines not off of a USB drive. I think you can on the new Intel based Macs though.
Installing Leopard on Akela turned out to be a very simple process, and so far everything looks good. I’ll give it a more thorough test tomorrow. In the meantime, everything is still looking good on Bagheera. Since Bagheera is so important to my art room work, I’m going to work with it for a couple weeks I think, before proceeding on with my plan, which is to upgrade Bagheera’s system drive and then upgrade it to Leopard. The current system drive on Bagheera is only 75 gig and I’m up against the line on it. 300 gig drives are selling at Best Buy for around $60, so I may just buy one of those and install it when I’m convinced the data drive upgrade didn’t break anything. One thing at a time.
I’ve got a little Crazy Harry action figure that stands watch over my office desk. He came complete with his faithful detonator, a barrel of double-x gunpowder and two sticks of dynamite. Animal had nothing on Crazy Harry.
I’ve been looking for this clip for ages. It’s one of my all time favorites. Makes me giggle every time I watch. I absolutely loved the way Jim Henson used to send-up all those cheesy 1970s easy listening pop tunes. I can’t hear this song played any more (Chanson D’Amour), thankfully, without also hearing Crazy Harry’s Ra-Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta and explosion. All elevator music should be like this.
We’re all built to our own scale. The human body is differently expressed in each of us. And sometimes a tad oddly. I’m thinking about this as I’m waiting for a new winter hat I ordered online to arrive.
I’m built to a somewhat small-ish scale. Height wise, I seem to be in the average range for a U.S. male: 5’9". But my frame is slender, even as I walk through middle age and put on some weight. Relative to other guys I am still pretty thin…but relative to where I was when I was a younger man I am much bigger in the waste and upper chest. The body fat comes, I am certain, from my lifestyle, which is mostly centered around earning a living as a software engineer. That keeps me sitting down most of the day. Also, most of my favorite pastimes (like…er…blogging) involve many rigorous hours of sitting down. That isn’t good for me at my age, but being single there is no one in my life to prod me, entice me, scold me into being more active. So I sit a lot. Even so, I’m still fitting nicely into my 31 inch waist 501s.
Shirts are the biggest problem. In theory I take a size small. Medium is too big in the shoulders. But sometimes small is too small in the waist, and sometimes…weirdly…small is too large in the waist. Or too long. Or too short. I have to try on Every Shirt before I buy it. It’s a pain…the biggest reason I hate shopping for clothes. Jeans and other pants are usually no problem. Business casual (which I hate) is easy. I just buy to the waist and inseam (32) and forget it. They don’t have to fit perfectly because they’re…business casual…and I hate business casual. Nice business suits I get tailored to fit so they’re no problem. I usually buy off the rack and then have them adjusted. At this point in my life I only have four suits and I seldom wear them. Bathing suits and briefs I have to really pay attention to the manufacturer’s sizing charts. My waist is 31 and nobody agrees on what that is. Sometimes it’s small. Sometimes it’s medium. One online bathing suit seller I’ve dealt with even calls that large. I suspect they’re doing that so that most males can order extra-extra-extra large in the bathing suit department, and feel Uber masculine.
Shoes are the one rock solid constant in my life. I take a 7 1/2. This is where everyone says I’m really small for a guy and I reckon it must be true because 7 1/2 is hard to find. One straight friend was constantly telling me I have woman’s feet, so I guess a woman’s feet are generally smaller then a male’s. But like everything else about my body, I think I’m "just right" and everyone else is unusual, even when the sizing charts are telling me I’m the unusual one. I am always being told by shoe sales droids to "just try the size eights…they’ll probably fit" and they don’t. I take a 7 1/2. I’ve worn this size since I was at least 16. The feet are the one thing about me that has never changed.
I’d never measured my head for a hat until this week, because I’d never bought one online before. But when the hard freeze set in last week I realized none of my caps really kept my ears very warm. I have a wool cap but it has shrunk over the years what with getting snowed and rained on and now it really looks dorky on me. I have a severe weather goose down coat with a nice goosedown hood you can clip onto it…but wearing that hood around without the jacket would look even more dorky. I got it in mind to buy a Russian winter hat like the one I used to have when I was a kid…
That’s me on one of my sleds way back in the Courthouse Square days. I think I’m 11 or 12 here. The shadow in the foreground is mom taking the snapshot. I remembered that cap being really nice because I could flip up the ear flaps when I didn’t need them, and flip down the front flap when it was snowing and it kept the stuff out of my eyes. I had no idea it was a common Russian design until one day an old lady smiled at me as I passed by and told me my hat made me look just like a little boy from her hometown back in Russia. I must have looked a bit alarmed because those were the cold war days and Russia was the enemy and I didn’t particularly want to look like one. I do remember smiling back to her and I kept on walking. But years later I would remember it and feel sad for her. In those days she was more likely then not an escapee from behind the iron curtain and feeling adrift in a strange land. I should have stopped to talk to her.
Anyway… So I decided to buy another one of these and I started looking around for one. Naturally none of the local stores here carried them, so I went online and found plenty. But I needed to measure my head before ordering. So I got out the cloth tape measure from mom’s old sewing kit that I inherited after she passed away, and wrapped it around my head like the online guides to finding your hat size suggested. I measure 23 inches around the top of my head. That translates to a size large.
Mom always said I had dad’s big head, but I don’t think she meant that literally. Anyway I found that interesting. My feet are small for a guy…my waist is slim but not narrow…I normally take a small shirt and small in gloves…and my head is…large. Now…I know that there are plenty of guys with bigger heads then mine…and I’ve talked with enough of them to understand perfectly that when it comes to intellect size does not matter. No. It just doesn’t. But I would have thought I took a small there too and I don’t. As I understand it, your head pretty much stops growing in adolescence.
All my life I’ve had a terrible time figuring out what to think of my own body. I have a natural inclination to think favorably of it…but I keep getting feedback (Hi Joe!) that I’m really not very good looking. And being single for most all my life, it’s pretty hard to keep thoughts that you’re really an ugly bastard out of your head. Logically I know that it’s all relative. When I was a skinny young male I thought I looked scrawny and awful. Now I look at photos of me from that period and I am floored by how cute I was. And since I stopped eating junk food and lost thirty pounds and got back into my 31 inch jeans I look a lot better now then I did a few years ago. But after getting told to my face that guys who look like that want guys who look like that, its something else to stress about as I ponder being just a few years shy of 60 and still single. My feet are small and my head is big. I actually had to buy my winter boots in a female size because none of the stores had what I was looking for in 7 1/2 but I could get exactly the boot I wanted in a female size…I forget which now, they number them differently from guy’s sizes…that fit perfectly. The advantage to being a gay male is you don’t feel de-masculinized when you have to wear woman’s boots. I have small feet and a big head. But at least the head will be warm when my hat gets here.
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