Things I Don’t Understand

From today’s GR Press

LOWELL TOWNSHIP — A 65-year-old Lowell woman was undergoing facial surgery early today after a homemade bomb flew about 40 feet through the air on Monday, went inside a passing car she was riding in and burned her, police said.
Frances Bernadette Thomas was being treated at Spectrum Health Butterworth Campus for serious injuries.
Kent County sheriff’s deputies said a 20-year-old Lowell man was at a friend’s house in the 13000 block of Grand River Drive about 6:30 p.m. when he filled a foot-long metal pipe with gunpowder and a paper towel. The man lit the explosive, which flew through the car window, striking Thomas.

What could possibly be going through someone’s head when they do something like that? I was a pretty heedless young man at age 20, I guess. Multiply that heedlessness by a factor of N and you get bomb throwing?

GoboLinux

Via Slashdot, a spiff article on the radical changes that might be made to create a really excellent, user-friendly desktop machine out of Linux.

The bit that stuck out for me was the pointer to GoboLinux, an alternative linux distro with nice OSX-like package management.

From their FAQ:

GoboLinux is a Linux distribution that breaks with the historical Unix directory hierarchy. Basically, this means that there are no directories such as /usr and /etc. The main idea of the alternative hierarchy is to store all files belonging to an application in its own separate subtree; therefore we have directories such as /Programs/GCC/2.95.3/lib.

To allow the system to find these files, they are logically grouped in directories such as /System/Links/Executables, which, you guessed it, contains symbolic links to all executable files inside the Programs hierarchy.

To maintain backwards compatibility with traditional Unix/Linux apps, there are symbolic links that mimic the Unix tree, such as “/usr/bin -> /System/Links/Executables”, and “/sbin -> /System/Links/Executables” (this example shows that arbitrary differentiations between files of the same category were also removed).

I’d love to try that. Sounds cool.

“Judeo-Christian” or Dysfunctionally Humanistic?

A Religious Liberal Blog critiques a Dennis Prager column.

Prager:

One major conflict between the Judeo-Christian value system and the various secular ones competing with it revolves around the answers to these questions: Is nature created for man or is man merely a part of nature? Or, to put it in other words, does the natural environment have any significance without man to appreciate it and to use it for his good?

The Judeo-Christian responses are clear: Nature has been created for man’s use; and on its own, without man, it has no meaning. Dolphins are adorable because human beings find them adorable. Without people to appreciate them or the role they play in the earth’s ecosystem to enable human life, they are no more adorable or meaningful than a rock on Pluto.

Religious Liberal:

ccording to Prager, “Nature has been created for man’s use; and on its own, without man, it has no meaning.” This sounds like a pernicious form of humanism.

Why? Because it locates value soley within the mind of humans, as if there was no relationship determined by the environment. If I like ice cream it’s not simply me imposing this on the food, it’s because there are particular ingredients such as chocolate that is agreeable. If it was made of sludge it’d be awful and no amount of imposition by my mind could change this. There are elements in the valued and the valuer, which make up value.

Also Prager looks to human beings and our valuations to determine the importance of others, using human utility as the standard. Monotheism looks to God to determine the importance of any one thing not human likes or dislikes. Augustine’s example is that of a spider. Humans find little use for such a creature, many kinds of spiders are poisonous and at best they are a nuisance for us.

But the spider’s ultimate value is not determined by human likes or dislikes. Rather the spider’s value is in relation to God and God’s aims in the world including the whole complex eco-system of which the spider plays it’s part. That is God is concerned with the good of the whole and sometimes that may or may not be agreeable to humans. But monotheism pushes us to think of the whole to move beyond our likings to a greater vision of the good.

But Prager would have us forgo this believing that the cosmos was created for human beings. But that’s an odd reading of Genesis where God declares the creation good well before humans were created. And in Romans 8:21-22, Paul writes of the salvation story as including the whole universe, not just humans. And the evolutionary account precludes such a human centric reading of our standing in the cosmos.

I highlight this piece because it’s important to not confuse right wing politics with orthodoxy.

Ukulele Category

The Ukulele seems to be becoming a full-on phenomenon. Who knew. I first started thinking about the uke when Topher turned me on to Israel Kawamiko’ole Kawakamiwo`ole (thanks Doug for the spelling lesson!). Then I heard about game designer Clinton R. Nixon picking up a uke. Then my bud Joe, already a fine guitarist, picked one up on a whim. I started getting interested in making music, initially because I wanted to try making some remixes… but then I started thinking about trying instruments. Joe offered to trade me his uke for some art or something, cause it was just sitting in his closet. It’s sweet.

Soon I was recording “Ring of Fire” and the Zippers’ “Hell.” Awesome.

Suddenly ukes seemed to pop up everywhere. Adam Black pointed out that one of his fave webcomics, Yirmumah, was running a “how to play uke” series in lieu of comics, and that they had in fact already presented Ring of Fire.

And tonight while reading metafilter I came across a Robot Ukelele Player Project. Lego based. (Mefi had already shown the uke some love in the past.)

Clearly the Day of the Uke is upon us.

So I need a category for it.