Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate Policies

I kid you not. Excerpts:

ATLANTA — Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant. Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she’s a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. “Christians,” he said, “are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian.”

The legal argument is straightforward: Policies intended to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination end up discriminating against conservative Christians.

It would be absurd to claim that either Britain or the U.S.A. are true democracies, but in both countries public opinion can influence policy, and while making many minor mistakes it probably avoids the biggest ones. If the German common people had had any say in the conduct of the war it is very unlikely, for instance, that they would have attacked Russia while Britain was still in the field, and still more unlikely they would have wantonly declared war on America six months later. It takes an expert to make mistakes as big as that. -Orwell, As I Please 7, 1944

In this essay you also find hints as to where much of Orwell’s vision of Oceana came from– Burnham’s Managerial Revolution, which predicts the division of the world into three totalitarian super-states, Germany, Japan, and the U.S.A.

Now we find so-called democratic governments free to make such big mistakes, since they often effectively control public opinion through a well-oiled mass media propaganda machine. And a standardized-test based educational system that systematically prevents anyone from thinking for themselves. Religion is the new religion.

Masters weekend.

Twenty years ago I was glued to the TV watching Jack Nicklaus win the Masters. My father and I would re-watch that tape in subsequent years when golf season was coming around. I was mostly a fan of that older generation of Nicklaus, Kite, Watson, etc., since he was. I’ve caught a little of it a few times, but this is the first time I’m really watching it since those days. This year, ‘ol Freddie is in contention, also at the age of 46.

Camus notes:

Note discussion of freedom pp. 56-57.

Even the most rigorous epistemologies imply metaphysics. And to such a degree that the metaphysic of many contemporary thinkers consists in having nothing but an epistemology. p. 44 (footnote)

A man’s rule of conduct and his scale of values have no meaning except through the quantity and variety of experiences he has been in a position to accumulate. p. 61

Today I visited both places in Detroit worth visiting. The John K. King used & rare bookstore and Joe Louis Arena. With that out of the way, I might go home early. I picked up Bukowski’s Post Office (at the Wayne State bookstore, not John Kings) and have been laughing too hard to sleep.

Two crackpot talks at the Astronomy session today. The first fellow looked normal enough for a physics meeting, where the crowd featured grunge geek students, beard-and-suspenders unix gurus, typical variations on the unkempt gangly professor, and the guy you thought might have been a crazy homeless man until you saw his pocket-protector. The crackpot, with tweed coat and cheap tie, had a vague resemblance to Stewart Smalley, except his legs were about 35% too short for his body. So short, that you first wonder if they are functional, perhaps accidentally truncated. His low-sagging belt didn’t help this impression (he must have forgotten his suspenders). He seemed to have relevant things to say about the WMAP data analysis, applying his experience in MRI imaging to the situation. Then, when gently provoked by the moderator, he let loose a minor tirade which climaxed in concluding that the Sun’s Planckian spectra proves it is a solid.

The second crackpot, the final speaker of the session, was an exquisitely ancient fellow in a well-pressed suit and a posture of defeat. One doesn’t often see the most senior physicists at these sorts of meetings, unless their face is on the poster. Even then, they are usually more animated. These are gatherings for young up-and-commers to up-and-come in your face. So this gentle old gentleman, looking distinguished yet confused, took the stand with some anticipation. He proceeded to read his carefully crafted notes with the calm cadence of a historian narrating the significance of some forgotten relic. Except his topic was an eclectic cosmology which made no sense. I had no chance to make sense of it, as he spent too much time relaying the whimsical names he gave to various unobservable features of this cosmos, rather than giving us any idea what the purpose of the whole thing was. All this time I wonder: what is an octogenarian doing dreaming up crazy, pointless cosmologies? That business should be left to bitter grad students and a bag of weed.

Red Wings lost in overtime, 3-2.