no. 724

 

"It's not that Christianity has failed, it's just never been tried. "

G K Chesterton

No. 723

 

In particular, the rise of the government was rewritten to reflect a deliberate political campaign designed to make people fearful enough to throw out a government which was being systematically attacked by the people wanting to replace it. Granted, the previous government hadn't been all that effective, but a lot of reasons why came out in the wash. 

The sad part was, the media couldn't see their own role in the events. When the media is owned by those who believe they have the right to choose leaders, and who also believe that only the rich have the right to make decisions, the media ceases to be an objective reporting tool, and becomes an instrument of criminal conspiracy. The sad thing was, nothing had really changed in six hundred years. Well the criminals were now exposed, but how long before they were replaced with more of the same?

from Hire A Hero by Timothy Ellis

Sound Familiar?

no. 722

War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to “a war against” whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off.

Ursula K. LeGuin

no. 721

Voldemort is the villian you hope to never face.

Umbridge is the villian you face EVERY DAY.

unknown

no. 720

“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”


Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th US President

no. 719

case 225

The Three Most Terrifying Words

The nun Hwídah was eating lunch with her clan when a senior monk approached, seeking her aid with a production issue. Not wishing to disturb the others, the senior monk bent down to whisper in Hwídah’s ear.
“Ah,” said Hwídah, rising from the table. “The three most terrifying words.” Immediately she departed with the senior monk.
A novice who witnessed this exchange happened upon the senior monk that evening. The novice asked, “What were those ‘three most terrifying words’?”
The senior monk replied, “Possible race condition.”
The novice thought a moment and said brightly, “Tell Hwídah that those cannot be the ‘three most terrifying words’, for the words ‘Definite race condition’ would be even more terrifying!”
The senior monk laughed and continued on his way.

That night the novice fell into long, terrible nightmares from which he was unable to wake. After what seemed like an eternity he came to his senses, twisted up inside his own bedsheets.
Tossing off the mangled covers, the novice found himself alone in the middle of a featureless desert. An empty sedative bottle lay on the sand nearby. Tied to it was a tightly-folded map of the whole world: all its continents and its mountains and its many, many deserts.
Inside one desert was a tiny red dot, pointed to by a tiny red arrow, next to which was some tiny red text in Hwídah’s handwriting which read, “Possibly your location”.


The Codeless Code
Fables and Köans for the Software Engineer

no. 718

 

“You are a Shit Spotter. It's satisfying work. ... We have observed that most of the trouble in the world has been caused by ten to twenty percent of folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus…The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right. 

— William Burroughs