12.13.07
Posted in Politics/Economics at 9:48 pm by Mark Lilback
I’d been working on a similar draft for months, but I don’t think I could have put it any better:
Guest Blogger: Romney’s Founders: “
by Geoffrey R. Stone, professor of law at the University of Chicago
Mitt Romney’s recent reflections on the role of religion in American politics implicitly called to mind a disturbingly distorted version of history that has become part of the conventional wisdom of American politics in recent years.
That version of history suggests that the Founders intended to create a ‘Christian Nation,’ and that we have unfortunately drifted away from that vision of the United States. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Those who promote this fiction confuse the Puritans, who intended to create a theocratic state, with the Founders, who lived 150 years later. The Founders were not Puritans, but men of the Enlightenment. They lived not in an Age of Faith, but in an Age of Reason. They viewed issues of religion through a prism of rational thought.
To be sure, there were traditional Christians among the Founders, including such men as John Jay, Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams. Most of the Founders, however, were not traditional Christians, but deists who were quite skeptical of traditional Christianity. They believed that a benevolent Supreme Being had created the universe and the laws of nature and had given man the power of reason with which to discover the meaning of those laws. They viewed religious passion as irrational and dangerously divisive, and they challenged, both publicly and privately, the dogmas of traditional Christianity.
Benjamin Franklin, for example, dismissed most of Christian doctrine as ‘unintelligible.’ He believed in a deity who ‘delights’ in man’s ‘pursuit of happiness.’ He regarded Jesus as a wise moral philosopher, but not necessarily as a divine or divinely inspired figure. He viewed all religions as more or less interchangeable in their most fundamental tenets, which he believed required men to treat each other with kindness and respect.
Thomas Jefferson was a thoroughgoing skeptic who valued reason above faith. He subjected every religious tradition, including his own, to careful scrutiny. He had no patience for talk of miracles, revelation, and resurrection. Like Franklin, Jefferson admired Jesus as a moral philosopher, but insisted that Jesus’ teachings had been distorted beyond all recognition by a succession of ‘corruptors,’ such as Paul, Augustine, and Calvin. He regarded such doctrines as predestination, trinitarianism, and original sin as ‘nonsense,’ ‘abracadabra’ and ‘a deliria of crazy imaginations.’ He referred to Christianity as ‘our peculiar superstition’ and maintained that ‘ridicule’ was the only rational response to the ‘unintelligible propositions’ of traditional Christianity.
John Adams, who identified most closely with the early Unitarians, also believed that the original teachings of Jesus had been sound, but that Christianity had subsequently gone awry. He wrote to Jefferson that the essence of his religious beliefs was captured in the phrase, ‘Be just and good.’ As President, Adams signed a treaty, unanimously approved by the Senate in 1797, stating unambiguously that ‘the Government of the United States . . . is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.’
George Washington was respectful of traditional Christianity, but he did not have much use for it. His personal papers offer no evidence that he believed in biblical revelation, eternal life, or Jesus’ divinity. Clergymen who knew Washington well bemoaned his skeptical approach to Christianity. Bishop William White, for example, admitted that no ‘degree of recollection will bring to my mind any fact which would prove General Washington to have been a believer in Christian revelation.’
Tom Paine, the author of Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason, insisted that ‘the religion of Deism is superior to the Christian religion,’ because it ‘is free from those invented and torturing articles that shock our reason.’ Paine explained that deism’s creed ‘is pure and sublimely simple. It believes in God, and there it rests. It honours Reason as the choicest gift of God to man’ and ‘it avoids all presumptuous beliefs and rejects, as the fabulous inventions of men, all books pretending to revelation.’’Paine dismissed Christianity as ‘a fable, which, for absurdity and extravagance, is not exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients.’ In Paine’s view, traditional Christianity had ‘served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.’
These words no doubt sound shockingly blunt and ‘politically incorrect’ to modern ears, but they were in fact the views of many of our most revered Founders. The fable that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation is just that - a fable.
It is worth noting that the Declaration of Independence does not invoke Jesus, or Christ, or Our Father, or the Almighty, but the ‘Laws of Nature,’ ‘Nature’s God,’ the ‘Supreme Judge,’ and ‘Divine Providence,’ all phrases that belong to the tradition of deism. The Declaration of Independence is not a Puritan or Calvinist or Methodist or Baptist or Protestant or Catholic or Christian document, but a document of the Enlightenment. It is a statement that deeply and intentionally invokes the language of American deism. It is a document of its own time, and it speaks eloquently about what Americans of that time believed.
The Constitution goes even further. It does not invoke the deity at all. Unlike the Puritan documents of the early seventeenth century, it makes no reference whatever to God. It cites as its ultimate source of authority not ‘the command of God,’ but ‘We the People,’ the stated purpose of the Constitution is not to create a government ‘according to the will of God’ but to ‘secure the Blessings of Liberty.’ Significantly, the only reference to religion in the 1789 Constitution expressly prohibits the use of any religious test for public office.
The Founders were not anti-religion. They understood that religion could help nurture the public morality necessary to a self-governing society. But they also understood that religion was fundamentally a private and personal matter that had no place in the political life of a nation dedicated to the separation of church and state. They would have been appalled at the idea of the federal government sponsoring ‘faith-based’ initiatives. They would have been quite happy to tolerate Mitt Romney’s Mormonism - as long as he keeps it out of our government.
”
(Via ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society.)
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10.09.07
Posted in Apple at 2:36 pm by Mark Lilback
There has been a lot of bitching about the iPhone lately: no SDK, bricking the phone with the 1.1.1 update, and the price drop to name a few. But in all of the instances I’ve read about, I’m 100% behind Apple. When someone purchased an iPhone, they knew what they were getting: a phone with no 3rd party support and a locked phone that only works with AT&T. If thye weren’t ok with that, they shouldn’t have bought it.
Apple publicly announced, and most Apple news sites reported that the 1.1.1 update would possibly brick your phone. The update itself warned that. Any idiot with a hacked iPhone who bricked it because they installed the update got what they deserved. Their problem, not Apple’s.
Also, realize that the hack(s) that cause the bricking were firmware updates — not software. The 1.1.1 update wipes the memory and installs a fresh set of software. But that software won’t work with the hacked firmware.
I have zero sympathy for anyone, in any situation, who installs hacked firmware. I’ve done it myself and if it had fucked up I would have blamed no one but myself.
And why is no one bitching that certain Blackberry models only work with certain wireless providers? Why does everyone expect Apple’s consumer electronic products (iPhone, AppleTV, etc.) to support whatever hacking they want, but no one bitches when they can’t do the same to their stereo, dvd player, or toaster? Apple isn’t selling the iPhone as a portable computer, they are selling it as a really spiffy phone. Just because people have false expectations doesn’t mean Apple has to live up to them.
As to the price issue, that is the way it has always been with technology. Should the people that bought Playstation 3s get a refund now that the price was lowered? I thought it was overly generous of Apple to give the $100 gift cards to people who paid the higher price. As a business, if I lower my prices, I’m sure has hell not giving a refund to everyone who bought it at a higher price. When a price at Walmart is “rolledback”, do these people go and demand their money back?
And as far as technology goes, early adopters always pay a premium. That a reason I rarely ever buy a hardware product that hasn’t been on the market for at least a few months. The price always comes down, and I’m happy to let others find the initial bugs and flaws.
I’m sure Apple will eventually release an iPhone SDK. But you never see them release one for a 1.0 product (except the OS, which requires one). They have to be absolutely certain they can live with the structure of the iPhone environment before they can release an SDK. Otherwise, they are stuck in backwards-compatibility-hell like Microsoft still is with DOS. Apple always makes sure everything is solid before releasing a public API. And that is part of what makes developing for them such a joy.
I basically have an SDK for writing MacSQL plugins that goes back to 1997. I’m the only one that uses it. And boy is it a pain in the ass when I have to change something in every plugin because of architectural changes I’m making to MacSQL or the MacSQL Framework. I can’t imagine the hell Apple would have to go through with an iPhone SDK before they are ready for it. I’m still scared about making the MacSQL Plugin API public and it’s been around for almost 10 years!
Why can’t anyone ever think of an issue from the other side. Apple has never promised anything about the iPhone and failed to deliver. The problem is with the iWhiners, not Apple.
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07.10.07
Posted in Personal at 10:47 pm by Mark Lilback
Kayla wasn’t just a pet to me. She was a comfort to me when everything else seemed wrong. She knew my feelings and emotions. If I was stressed, she was, too. If I was down, she would come sit by me and if I leaned close, she’d wash me, too.
I first decided to get my own pet in 2002 after I had back surgery for a herniated disc. I was going to be bed-ridden for a while, and working from home for a long while afterwards. I didn’t want to be alone, so almost as soon as I left the hospital Audrey and Steph took me to the Petco at Union Square (NYC) to adopt a cat.
The adoption people showed me a lot of cats, one of which even puked on me. But I didn’t really feel a connection with any of them. I walked to the cages and saw a black cat they hadn’t shown me. I was told she wasn’t very friendly and they didn’t take her out of the cage much. I stuck my finder in her cage, and she walked up and started licking it. Everyone was very surprised, and even more so as they opened the cage and she calmly sat in my arms and purred.
I knew right then that Kayla was the cat for me. She had been abused in the past (she barely had any teeth) and ran at the sight of most people, and especially crowds. There were only a couple of other people she immediately warmed up to and most of the time they were people who are very close to me (like my father).
Unfortunately, she had serious health problems (gee, just like me). In New York she had a stroke and had to be put in an oxygen cage and take a couple days to recover. It turns out half her heart was enlarged, and she also had a hole in her heart that was supposed to have sealed up when she was born but didn’t.
She never liked to travel, except when riding in the U-Hual truck when I moved back to Texas. She always freaked out when in her carrier unless I kept my hand on her.
She had been sick recently, with some kind of infection in her throat making it hard for her to breath and eat. I was taking her to the vet today, but she really freaked out when I tried to take her to the car without her carrier (I had loaned it to someone else). Then all of a sudden she froze, urinated very quickly, and stopped breathing.
I tried mouth-to-mouth. I tried beating her heart. I stuck my finger in her throat hoping to clear something out, but it came out covered in blood. I buried her this afternoon underneath my bedroom air conditioner that she so liked to lay on.
Kalya would have been 6 next month.
I’ll forever hold a place in my heart for her.
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05.01.07
Posted in Pet Peeves at 9:59 pm by Mark Lilback
Cell phones have been around for a long time now (I’ve had one for over ten years), and they’ve always had really nice features like a call log (incoming and outgoing), custom ring tones, etc. So why the hell haven’t home phones added these features?
I really get frustrated when I can’t look at my home phone to see when I made a call (don’t want to bug them too often). Caller ID works fine for seeing incoming calls, but would it be that difficult to record the outgoing calls?
My current home phone has a phone book feature, but it doesn’t use the phone book name when someone calls. That’d be nice for numbers without caller ID information. And my system came with two handsets — but I have to enter the numbers in both. It gets frustrating to have to go find the other handset because I can’t remember a phone number. It shouldn’t be that hard to synchronize the phone books since they are both cordless and are transmitting data anyway.
This disparity is just another reason I’d love to get rid of my home phone for my cell phone.
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04.12.07
Posted in Pet Peeves at 5:08 pm by Mark Lilback
[slug]grocery_shopping[/slug]
I really can’t comprehend how someone can accidentally get in the express checkout lane with a full basket of groceries. And I really can’t understand why the store staff doesn’t say something.
When approaching the register, you have to look to see if the light is on. The light is normally on the Express Checkout sign. And it should be pretty obvious to everyone that the only lane that cells cigarettes is an express lane! (10 items or less versus the normal 20 items or less at Wal-Mart.)
I guess I was just raised differently. Hell, I question getting in the express lane when I have 21 items, even if it would save me 5-10 minutes. Heck, even when I’m in a regular line with even half a cart of stuff, I’ll always let anyone behind me with a couple items go ahead.
Another thing: why does stores still accept checks? What checking account doesn’t come with a debit card? Heck, Wal-Mart doesn’t even keep the checks anymore, they just run the routing and account number like a credit card number. But instead of entering a PIN or signing for the purchase, I’ve got to wait while someone writes out a check (that should have been written, except for the amount, while they waited in line), digs our their ID, etc.
Hell, they guy with 40+ items in the 10 item lane at Wal-Mart last week realized he forgot something after writing his check and was about to tear it up and write a new one!! With at least 6 customers behind him!
Not accepting checks would be a real win-win situation. No more waiting while people write out checks, get approval, etc. The stores don’t have to worry about hot checks. And we save a few trees!
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Posted in Personal at 4:55 pm by Mark Lilback
[slug]health[/slug]
Once again, I’ve been hit by health problems again. This time it was a abscess on my lower back right below the waist. It became incredibly painful, and boy did it hurt when the doctor lanced it. I stayed in the hospital for four days, and probably close to another four days before it in pain and recovering afterwards. I’m still on antibiotics and it is still there, just not as nasty.
This goes on top of being bipolar and diabetes. A normal A1c rating (the measure of blood sugar levels in blood over the last 120 days) is 4 to 6. The American Diabetic Association says a value of 7 is acceptable for a diabetic. That’s what mine was in the fall. Down from a 9 the year before. Last month, I was a 10.4.
Obviously, I really need to reduce my sugar levels. I’m starting back at kickboxing next week, which will help. But I’m not sure what to do about my diet. Anyone who knew me 10+ years ago would be amazed at it. Back then I lived on pizza, burgers, and multiple pitchers of kool aid a day. Now I eat vegetables (really! that’s a huge change), only drink water and sugar-free drinks, and live off foods made with Splenda.
A few years ago, when moving apartments after 9/11 (I lived two blocks away), I herniated my L2/L3 disc which pinched every nerve to my lower body. That was some serious pain. Even with years of physical therapy, my back still really hurts. According to my surgeon at the time, I have the back of a 65 year-old, and will have multiple disc problems throughout my life.
Add to that multiple kidney stones and serious digestive problems leading to my gall bladder being removed, and I haven’t been a healthy boy. Throw the depression I frequently get even though I’m on multiple drugs for my bipolar disorder, and things don’t look too good. Plus, I had a few other problems last year that left me incapacitated for months.
Not that I’m feeling down, at least not right now. Today I feel really good and finally decided to get some thoughts off my chest. Expect more posts soon.
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02.08.07
Posted in Programming, WebObjects at 6:04 pm by Mark Lilback
I’ve been spending days on this. I kept getting messages that the socket to the app was being closed, and I couldn’t find out why.
[2007-02-08 14:13:40 PST] : Unable to set socket timeout:Socket is closed
Turns out that by calling
com.google.checkout.sample.protocol.CallBackParser.getInstance().parseToJAXB(new InputSource(aRequest.contentInputStream()))
either jaxb, the xml parser, or the google code was closing the input stream returned by the request, which was closing the socket to the web server. Instead, I changed the code to
com.google.checkout.sample.protocol.CallBackParser.getInstance().parseToJAXB(new InputSource(new java.io.StringReader(aRequest.contentString())))
and it works fine.
I figured I’d post this note so that if someone else runs into this problem, they’d hopefully find a solution via a Google search.
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12.06.06
Posted in Personal at 12:17 am by Mark Lilback
I’ve been an avid game player my whole life. I helped started a gaming club in college, which I donated most of my games too. Since then, I’ve bought a lot of them. But as I’ve gotten older, I get to play them a lot less.
The biggest reason is now that I’ve moved back to rural, playing games isn’t the biggest past time. Maybe after football and hunting season are over. But then I’d still have to compete with poker (three casinos within a 30 minute drive) and other sports.
Even if I could find people, many of my favorite games are very complex and beyond what most people are willing to for fun. I mean, most people in this area got married young and never went to college. Hell, most people look pretty freaked out when I suggest playing Jeopardy on my playstation 2 instead of a shooter game.
I’ve never really understood online games. I’d much rather sit at a table with a group of people instead of at a computer. The biggest point of games, to me, is the social interaction. And as great as the Internet is, it is not a replacement for social interaction.
So, I’m going to list all the games I own in the off chance that someone from the area might do a google search for one of them and find this list. Besides the board games, I love to play Hearts and Spades. I’m open to learning any new games, as long as they aren’t purely random (ala Risk). Superior strategy should have a pretty good chance of winning.
Monopoly
Clue
Life
Scrabble
Rummikub
Trivial Pursuit original Genus edition
Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture/dvd
Trivial Pursuit 80’s edition
Mille Bornes
Apples to Apples
Scruples
Lunch Money
Settlers of Catan
Thunder Road
Kremlin
Cold War
Republic of Rome
Advanced Civilization
Illuminati
Munchkin
Elixir
Grass
Game of Thrones: the Boardgame
Diplomacy
History of the World
Politika
Sid Meier’s Civilization: the Boardgame
Scattegories
Trump (late 80’s version)
Axis & Allies (both editions)
Axis & Allies: D-Day
Ghettopoly
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11.07.06
Posted in Personal at 5:09 pm by Mark Lilback
[slug]sysadmin-nightmare-2[/slug]Well, we got a bit of a stay on having to move the servers, but I’m still working on it as fast as I can. I’ve got everything except perl modules installed on the new server.
I’ve already moved: the rtlabs subversion repository, www.rtlabs.com, and all our WebObjects applications. Our databases have been moved, too, but I’ve got a final import of the data from the Oracle server running right now.
I’m also in the process of setting up mail and mailing lists. Then I just need to move blogs.rtlabs.com and www.lilback.com. After that, a switch of dns and all should be good.
An interesting thing I never realized: network solutions’ domain registration also includes dns hosting. If you consider what a lot of places want to charge for dns hosting, that makes their registration fees pretty reasonable.
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11.03.06
Posted in Politics/Economics at 6:11 pm by Mark Lilback
I just got back from early voting, and once again I’m disgusted by the ballot. Fortunately it was still optical scan, not one of the disastrous touch-screen system. But I really can’t stand seeing the majority of the races only have one candidate listed and no spot for a write-in.
I’m sure some of my elected officials are doing a great job and that’s why no one runs against them. But I can’t believe that is true for all of them. My family has pretty good name recognition (I’ve never gone anywhere with my step-mother without running in to people who know her) and in a small town (approx 20,000) that is really all that is needed. I think I’ll register myself as a candidate for something in 2008. I don’t know if I’ll actually campaign, but there should at least be a challenger on the ballot for every race.
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