Categories
meta technology

Linking to Newspapers

For today’s edition I thought I would share a tool I found back with my previous blogs. It is most useful for those who like to blog their reactions to news items. I used to link to New York Times articles and that would become a problem once those articles left the one week timeframe and were no longer accessible for free. I was not the first to see this problem because someone else made a tool which generates special links to articles in the New York Times which are freely accessible in perpetuity. (They do this with the permission of the people at the New York Times so there is no question regarding the legality of the tool or the practice.)

I don’t know how many other major newspapers pose this challenge for news bloggers nor if any of them also have such tools, but this is a great tool for anyone who does that kind of blogging and likes nytimes.com as a news source.

I was reminded of this tool when I linked to an NPR story yesterday. I don’t know how much I will need it since before I was often commenting on Op/Ed pieces which are mostly only Times Select (paid service) now. Since I don’t pay for that access I may not use the tool much, but hopefully it can be useful for other people.

Categories
life

What Kind of God Do You Worship?

I heard this story on NPR this morning about a dozen Catholic women in the US who claim to have been ordained as priests. I am not Catholic, and so it would seem that I have no vested interest in this story. However, this story brings up a question that I have had with a number of movements within a variety of religions in recent history (for example – the schism among the Anglicans over whether to bless gay marriages or ordain openly gay priests). When I hear about these debates among the clergy and the actions of those who proceed to do something that has not been sanctioned – in this case, ordaining women to be priests – I begin to wonder what kind of a God they worship.

In many churches, where decisions of policy are made by a vote, I can understand (to some degree) why people would approach these changes the same way we approach social changes in a democratic society. Ordain a few women priests (or whatever your cause is) to show that the change is not going to make the organization fall apart as a result. In more authoritarian organizations, like the Catholic church, it seems ludicrous to do so. These organizations preach that the doctrines are not made by man and thus cannot be changed by the will of men. Following that doctrinal reasoning, a change must not take place without the direction and sanction of God (however that is perceived to happen within any particular organization). There may be some value in debating an idea, but to take action without sanction in an organization with those beliefs makes no sense. This is what leads me to my question.

If you believe what the Catholic church teaches about being directed by God and about Papal Infallibility then you could not, in good conscience, defy the laws of the Catholic church. If you do not believe those things then you should ask yourself – why do I remain a Catholic?

As far as I can figure, the people who do these things must believe one (or both) of two things.

First, they may believe that the church is a social institution. This would imply that it is organized and run by people who are fallible and that those people make their policies according to their best understanding of what God desires. If this is the case, it would make sense to call to their attention those cases where they have interpreted the will of God erroneously. The question becomes, who is the final judge of which interpretation is correct (yours or the church leaders’).

Second, they may believe in a God who is fallible. This reduces their deity to an extremely powerful man, or possibly some other extra-terrestrial being. In saying this I do not wish to mock anybody’s beliefs on the subject. I am merely outlining where my logic takes me as I try to explain their actions.

If someone believes in an all-powerful, all-knowing God and also believes that their church is directed by that God, then it makes no sense to knowingly disregard the edicts of that church. To do so suggests the desire to say “I have a better understanding/interpretation of what is good than an all-knowing, all-powerful Deity.” Does anyone really want to say that?

Categories
politics

Well Stated

I stumbled onto Peonicus’ View of Politics the same day I started my new blog and I thought it would be a good excuse to post a reaction and test out my blog a little more.

I was amazed to hear criticism for both the left and the right so early in the post. Right off I was saying to myself “my thoughts exactly.”

When I read:

What we need is for the existing society to behave with the primary goal of the good of the whole. This means that we focus less on our personal fortunes, and more on using our influence to do good. We must start at the most fundamental unit of society: our families. First, we need to respect and honor our spouses even more than ourselves. Then we must be loving parents, and teach our children to love and respect others despite inevitable differences.

I recognized some positively primitive thinking – like my own. The answer does not lie in making new laws to govern campaign finance – although those might be helpful. The answer lies in returning to who we are – people who want better lives for ourselves and our children. If that is our primary focus, and if we can remember to “forgive and ask for forgiveness,” we may be able to get past our mudslinging and divisiveness and start to find actual solutions. That makes me begin to wonder, is Peonicus right in suggesting:

What would happen in the Middle East if everybody there, Jews and Muslims alike taught their children that there is no us and them, there is simply us. I think the fighting would end tomorrow, and the poverty of the region could be ended by 2007.

It would be nice if he was, but we’ll never know unless more people think like this.

Categories
meta

Back on the Scene

It’s good to be back in the blogging scene. That may sound strange for a first post, but this is my fifth blog. The first two were little more than experiements. I then began publishing three more – representing different aspects of my life. That was back when I was an unabashed technophile.

Things have changed since I was last blogging. I no longer thrill when I am surfing the web and trying new gadgets. I have settled down to a point where I am finding much more of my joy in more pedestrian pursuits such as gardening, dutch oven cooking, and camping with my family.

None of that is reason enough to dump my previous blogs. They were good. I had more readers than I would have expected. Occationally there were some very stimulating conversations about the topics of interest to me. All of that I would have liked to keep, but my hosting provider changed policies and I was no longer able to get hosting to satisfy me for my domain. My domain is now parked, and I have not yet decided if I will keep it, or give it up.

I have gone for months wishing that I could share some of my new thoughts on a blog, but I did not want to return to blogger after seeing how nice some of the other blogging platforms are. I had moved on to WordPress, b2Evolution, and even Drupal. All of them offered options more advanced than blogger – and I am something of a control freak when it comes to my online persona. Then today I learned about the new Blogger beta and discovered that the folks at Google had helped Blogger to narrow the gap between themselves and other blogging software. Having given up on getting my own site up and running anytime soon, it sounded like just what I was looking for. Free, better than before, and in line with my less demanding requirements for a blog.

So here I am, back on the scene. While my outlook on technology has morphed somewhat, I hope to explore how technology can be really useful in our lives (especially mine) and also to highlight where the technologies of yesterday may actually be superior to their modern counterparts. Honestly I don’t think that the less advanced technology will prove superior very often, but I do think that some less modern perspectives could prove enlightening in the world of the Information Age.