bike4fish

Over the years I've observed a number of types of sociopath wannabe, such as the Randroids, the whiny "libertarians", and the angry young male "anarchists". They use their various dogmas to excuse their anti-social behaviors - "I don't owe anyone else for my success, so I can be a jerk" or "I'm oppressed by the government, so I can be a jerk" or "I'm fighting the Man, so I can be a jerk." In general, ignoring the contribution of their positions of privilege and the society around them to their well being, while grasping at some myth of "individuality" to justify their bad behavior. My take is, if you want to be an ass, be an ass. If you have to make excuses for it, you are a hypocritical ass, which is considerably lower on the scale than a simple, natural ass.

Recently, I've noticed another sort of sociopath wannabe - the sort that uses Christianity as their enabler for their behavior. The logic seems to be "I've accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, so I will be forgiven for whatever I do, so I can behave badly, but there will be no real consequences, because Jesus will take me to heaven." While one can see this manifested over and over in the peccadilloes of public Christian figures, it was brought home by observing the behavior of someone I'm acquainted with. What gets me is that this variety of hypocrisy is so blatantly counter to what Jesus said.

(Personal aside: while I'm a dyed in the wool atheist, I am a firm believer in what I see as a "state of grace". I've seen seen people reach such a state both through religion, and completely without it. Harking back to Luther, the path to a state of grace (salvation, if you would) cannot be bought by good works. (Or, IMHO, by adhering to a specific behavior code.) However, one in a state of grace cannot avoid performing good works. (Also, while performing good works with the idea of "buying" salvation isn't likely to get you there, performing good works for their own sake may well.)

I'm not saying that using one's religion as an excuse for sociopathy is limited to Christians - I'm aware of similar trips in Buddhist and pagan communities. But their reasons are much more in line with the Randroid/libertarian/anarchist path - they rationalize that what they do is OK. The Christian sociopath wannabes seem to be different - they seem to know what they are doing is wrong, but as they individually will be OK in the end, it doesn't matter.

Jesus is spinning on his cross.

Space War, on one of the University of Michigan's computers back in 1971.
I found out then that I don't have the hand-eye coordination for real-time games. I've had much more success at games like Adventure.

Yay!!!

I was up in Eagle visiting my sister this weekend, and drove up to Edwards to have lunch with my friend, Kristin. On the way back to Eagle, I hit a patch of slush (the road was wet, but I had seen no slush before that point. The car spun out and unless a miracle occurs, totalled.

I just have a mildly sore shoulder and a few bruises.

It's really smoky tonight in - worse even than last night and worse than this morning. What is probably worse is that the current smoke smells fresh, while that this morning could be described as stale.

I suspect that means that the fire retardant dropped from planes (I heard them every few minutes this evening until it got too dark for them to fly) hasn't kept the fire from spreading further. The reports of 7100 acres burned were hours ago. The fire is officially 0% contained.

So far, 90-some buildings (including a good number of houses) have burned, but that's only from the areas where it has been possible to make an accurate assessment. The total will probably be several hundred.

We all knew it was going to happen, the question was 'when?'

Here's a music meme from sabotabby.

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

1. Peaches en Regalia - The Mothers of Invention. This is actually the "hold" music my ISP plays. Zappa was one inventive mother.
2. Plastic Fantastic Lover - Jefferson Airplane deriding the TV. I wonder what they would have said if they had known iPhones were in the future.
3. Pretty Fly for a Rabbi - Weird Al. Can I help it that I like this better than the original?
4. Planxty Irwin - A haunting tune by Turlough O'Carolan. Played by a gazillion Irish bands, for good reason.
5. Pie in the Sky - aka The Preacher and the Slave - Joe Hill. A parody of "In the Sweet By-and-By". A good old Wobbly song. My current copy is on Fellow Workers, a collaboration of Ani Difranco and Utah Phillips.

P took a bit of effort - I went through my entire CD and vinyl collection and only came up with about 10 titles. Believe me, there are some I'm protecting you from. Think Don Ho. (No, I don't have any Don Ho, but I do have a set of "Hawaiian music" records - probably from the 60's.)

I just finished the final (I hope) editing on the dissertation and got all the signatures I need. I sent a copy off to the grad school to get it checked to see that it meets the formatting standards.

I should be human next week.

... is defended and passed.

I just have to hunt down one signature, prepare a final copy of the monster, and submit it all before next Friday.

I think I need some recovery time.

... is writ.

Sure, there may be some revisions, and I need to fix the question marks that are in the paces some of the references are missing (they seem to come and go), but it hangs together pretty well, and even has a flow through it.

So, now I need to transfer the flow to the presentation.