Among many libertarians and a few progressivists, the concept of marriage privatization – where the state does not involve itself in the definition of marriage – has gained increasing worth as the debate over LGBT rights continues to intensify in the United States. Of course, a main fear over the concept is the possibility that religious groups could run amok with their own definitions and performances of family relationships which would clash with other religious groups’ definitions and performances, particularly as those who advocate for marriage privatization have not as forcefully argued for a secularization of the institution (in which religious groups’ performances are not recognized by the state, which only recognizes privately-composed contracts).
Idea on the next generation of virtual worlds
A thought just came to mind less than an hour ago: the upcoming decade will see virtual world networks (within the "3D web") which are much less emphasizing of the "world" aspect (as in the "outside" environment of Second Life) and much more emphasizing of interconnected "rooms" (a bit like IMVU, but where the user creates one’s own persistent room in which to store models and widgets and simply invites or is invited to other rooms through hyperlinks embedded within the room).
This came to mind as I thought about how the World Wide Web had evolved in the 1990s and 2000s. In the ’90s, the emphasis was laid upon allowing people to create their own custom homepages, with a variety of template arrangements, on a number of ad-supported or user-paid webhosts (Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, Freewebs, .Mac, FurNation, Furtopia). In the 2000s, most attention was paid to the rise of social networking sites which, while increasingly restricting the ability to arrange visual cues and templates within the page (i.e., from MySpace to Facebook), allowed users to post a larger variety of content by streamlining user publication of webpages.
So, if the variety of 3D virtual worlds continues to increase in the 2010s, I expect that the ability to create 3D spaces/rooms and post models into them will become further streamlined and automated, but the spaces will also become further boxed in and increasingly uncustomizable in the process.
This dynamic room publication will also allow users to make as many rooms in the 3D WWW as there are pages on the 2D WWW.
Enemies lists: or, “The world is going to hell, YAY!”
Whether its DiscoverTheNetworks, Masada2000’s (s)hitlist, the Nuremberg Files, or Nixon’s (or Scientology’s) Enemies list, any public, Internet-accessible list of names of personalities who are categorized as agents and foot soldiers of the list compiler’s "true enemy" tends to invite general public scrutiny concerning the purpose or intended use of that list. However, a public hit list is not often designed in a similar fashion as a solicitation to murder (such as that lobbed by the Iranian clerical regime against Salman Rushdie in the 1980s), as these lists can serve as invitations to general intimidation of the mentioned individuals. These databases of names, at best, are a sort of non-governmental "know your enemies" directive which are intended to influence and direct the minds and actions of fellow ideologues against specific targets which are perceived as the most tender joints and tendons of the larger body of that most fearsome "conspiracy" against the pet ideology of the list’s compilers.
I cannot say that enemies’ lists, (s)hitlists and rogue galleries are an effective means of ensuring the success of the list compiler’s ideology, but it is interesting in how such lists are used by non-governmental, non-commercial organizations and social-religious movements. Should such lists be compiled?
More on editing the Jefferson Bible: de-geographization
I edited a copy of Jefferson’s Bible to remove the words "Jews" (replaced with "the people"), "Israel" and "Judaea" (replaced both with "the land"), and "Jerusalem" (replaced with "Great City"). I’m still thinking about replacing other notable cities in Israel with non-descript synonyms.
The reason for that is my recent idea that Christianity’s doctrinal obsessions over Judaism, Israel and Jerusalem are manifested both in anti-Judaic/anti-Semitic and Christian Zionist/apocalyptic extremes, both of which de-humanize the Jews into tools for Christian eschatological machinations; the same treatment is afforded regularly to Israel and its cities, especially Jerusalem.
In fact, what helped me come to this conclusion is a documentary on Jerusalem syndrome which I watched a long while back. The syndrome, which has been documented by psychologists as happening primarily among both adherents to, and former subscribers to, Christianity in its more established forms and denominations, is an affliction which manifests itself in a number of ways ranging from tripping out (as in coming to the idea that you are a reincarnation of King David) to falling out (as in running around in the street, claiming that you are a prophet for "God’s imminent coming", or trying to blow up the al-Aqsa Mosque in order to hasten the aforementioned eschatological event).
Perhaps, by removing all explicit references to landforms and extant human settlements in Israel and nearby areas, Jefferson’s Bible can be further removed from the precipice of absent-minded bigotry and inanity which has been occupied by various translations and versions of the New Testament for over a thousand and a half years or more.
My edit of Jefferson’s Bible is designed, in my opinion, to resemble the Book of Job – sans the supernatural content – in its non-localization; basically, the less that people know of the whereabouts of the land of Uz, the better chance that Christians won’t desire a Crusade to gain it back for Christendom. The same approach should be used for explaining Jesus’ concepts on ethics – that he was simply a guy who lived in such-and-such place who demanded a reform of the ethical system of his culture and pissed off the cultural leaders enough that he was accused of apostasy and was executed. No depiction as a prophet, no virgin birth, no miracles, no blaming a specific extant people and religion for the problems in society, no mentioning of a specific target people. Just the facts and no more.
Furthermore, if neither the Jews nor any part of Israel are mentioned in the New Testament, then perhaps it will finally exempt Judaism’s subscribers and associates from those special "tender mercies" and "caring love" which Christians and ex-Christians, for millenia, have desired to shower upon the Jews in particular (and, with just as much fervor, LGBT people). The Jews won’t be that group of people upon which so much is blamed (issues in Southwest Asia, blood libel, world domination, being too smart – for which I had fallen a few years ago and have yet to shake off – and so on).
It doesn’t mean that I will convert to a customized Christianity or identity as a Christian; too many hangups from years past, so I can never fathom returning to it. I COULD convert to Reform Judaism or anything left of that (the more conservative Judaic denominations tend to wax more authoritarian and chaotic against their members and competing sects), but I fancy the more ancient (semi-)polytheistic – or even (semi-)polyDEistic – folk belief systems, at least more for their ability to not rule out other fellow deities with as much fervor as Abrahamic monotheism.
Of course, if I were to identify with a religion now, I’d say Buddhism mixed with a fondness for Pagan and Neopagan traditions.
But if I’ve only made one contribution to the world for which I can have no regrets, it is to help de-supernaturalize and somewhat de-bigotize the scriptural basis of a religion which holds sway over a sixth of the world’s population.
IdeaTorrent
IdeaTorrent, the server software which runs Ubuntu Brainstorm, may be the best user-generated approval and discussion system that I’ve seen since Digg was launched some years back. Instead of the initial post link being the only thing (besides comments) upon which users can submit single votes of approval (or, since Reddit, downvotes of disapproval), users can now submit and vote upon proposed "solutions" which are listed under an initial post, in addition to providing comments (I don’t think comments are voted upon in IdeaTorrent’s system).
I would describe IdeaTorrent’s approach as a sort of user-driven vote-based survey forum, in which questions or concerns are voiced (once, preferably) and users submit and vote upon answers or solutions for such concerns before they offer their comments and reactions.
I think that this could be used by user-driven news-discussion/news-vetting forums which are often solicited for answers or solutions, such as Care2, GreenChange, and Reddit. It could help users focus less upon the popularity or awareness of a recent issue or information (as in how many votes have been recorded, how many comments have been submitted, how long the story stays on the front page), and more upon what solutions or responses are most ideal or popular.
Furthermore, this may be a further elaboration upon the separation of reactions from comments which I’ve come to favor in newer user-ranking news discussion forums. IdeaTorrent’s model is, overall, a step in the right direction.
Skin color in LGBT artistic porn
Being someone who identifies as gay but is hardly acculturated to the lives of gay and bi males in constant close proximity and density compared to those who live in more urbane areas, I can readily admit that most of my day-to-day experience with the gay experience is composed of perusing artistic, fantastical displays on the Web. I’m not as frequent in coming across photographic depictions of m/m and m/solo models, unless fantastical photomanipulations can count as photographic depictions.
Read more of this hackey-sounding rant on skin color in LGBT porn…
Religion, descent and the one-drop rule
This morning, I thought about how religion uses patrilineal or matrilineal descent as a means of indicating whether one has been born into the religion of his or her most immediate ancestor(s), and how, in the case of Judaism and Islam, such stipulations have been contorted by both adherents, non-adherents and detractors from a simple Abrahamic membership inheritance issue into an ethnoracial issue in those societies which observe an Abrahamic religion on a majority basis.
Exile politics
I understand the impulse for diaspora/exile politics, especially the types which exist regarding Burma, Tibet, China, Cuba, Israel, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, even though I somewhat abhor the violence, propaganda and ill feelings which usually accompany such politics. I’m far less understanding of the bitter anti-exile feelings which pervade much of the left wing in the United States.
For instance, when Spain’s Civil War ended in 1939 with a Falangist victory, a Republican government-in-exile was created in the resulting Spanish Republican diaspora which jettisoned to the United Kingdom and many parts of Latin America, and that same diaspora did not make amends with the Spanish state until democracy returned under the rule of the current monarch, Juan Carlos I, in the late 1970s.
At the same time, when a diaspora in favor of a currently-installed regime has a larger presence in another country, a large number of that diaspora’s local branch will lobby in favor of satisfactory treatment in foreign relations with their home country’s current regime.
I don’t even think that most people on the left know how to perceive diaspora politics or understand the feelings and impulses which are embedded in such politics, unless (of course) they revert to early 20th century paranoia about "dem hyphenated Americans" which were uttered by at least one or two presidents.
The other Internet entitlement mentality
A lot of journalists and media distribution industry figures have published comments on an Internet-based "entitlement mentality", which (they say) perceives media content as free and all-you-can-eat.
I disagree with the assertion that the Internet entitlement mentality is focused upon content (news posts, videos, radio, etc.), as such an assertion has led to the ongoing legal/political conflict over peer-to-peer file-sharing.
Instead, I feel that the IEM is focused more upon memberships or subscriptions to various services, especially those with a social networking aspect.
On Paul Shirley
Seriously…telling a dirt-poor nominally-Catholic-majority country’s population to practice birth control?
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LOL logic.
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I mean….fuck. I’ll just quote a right-wing blog’s post to sum up what just happened:
He had a point, but Paul Shirley’s Haiti comment, “Use a condom once in a while” assured that his audience left him. And the credibility of his argument left as well.
…and he has been dropped as a freelance writer from ESPN. And he continues to be beat with a thousand cluesticks over the Internet.
But to those who do defend him, its just because – and ONLY BECAUSE – he’s not identifying with the "Liberal" "PC" "do-gooders", even when those conservatives who *have* thought through the whole Haiti aftermath crisis have noticed a small amount of "whoa nelly!"-grade bullshit in the guy’s post.
Now, if ESPN doesn’t value his opinions enough to keep him, does that make ABC Disney a socialist conglomerate which doesn’t believe in its employees’ freedom of speech?
Imagine: a socialist business that’s not owned by the government…
