Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

It’s been about 24 hours since we installed the new version of the Wordpress blogging software on our main Irregular Times page, and at first, everything was working great. Right now, however, I’ve got steam coming out of my ears trying to work with the software.

There are out-of-memory errors popping up everywhere, making administration of the site, and sometimes even just viewing it, a difficult task. It just took us 30 minutes to get up a simple article, as the new WordPress 2.5 software kept stripping out tags, reassigning categories, giving the name of the wrong author, and even making the title of the article blank.

WordPress 2.5 looks to be full of errors that dramatically cripple the operation of a previously healthy blog.

Avoid this update, bloggers, until WordPress comes out with a fix.

Thanks to The Great Beyond for debunking a conspiracy theory that’s been making the rounds on the Internet lately. Some people have been saying that a new particle accelerator will create an exotic subatomic particle that will spawn a black hole that will swallow the Earth, or maybe even unravel the fabric of the entire universe.

That’s crazy, of course. After all, there are things in the universe that can accelerate particles at much greater speeds, and in much greater mass, than any puny human machine.

There are more important things to worry about, like the tuatara.

You probably don’t know what a tuatara is, do you? There’s a reason for that. Government officials have decided that it would be unwise to give appropriate publicity to the tuatara problem. They don’t want to see riots and the hoarding of goods.

Another article over at Nature explains the crisis, however, for those who care to know.

The tuatara, once belittled as a kind of primitive lizard, is actually outcompeting humanity, and will soon take over the planet.

“New Zealand scientists who analysed DNA harvested from fossils up to 8,750 years old now report that tuatara seem to do one thing remarkably fast: evolution. In a paper published this month in Trends in Genetics, the researchers show that the rate of molecular evolution in the reptile is among the fastest yet observed for any vertebrate.”

So, first we understand that tuataras are evolving at a greater rate than any other animal with a backbone.

Second, consider global climate change. It’s become plain that humans are adapting too slowly to climate change. Specifically, humanity cannot adapt its technology quickly enough to prevent disastrous consequences.

If human beings cannot provide the adaptation to deal with global climate change, who can? Apparently, the tuataras. They evolve faster than any other vertebrate, after all, and evolution is all about adaptation.

It will be the tuataras who develop clean energy technology, not humans.

Just think of what the tuataras will be able to do with their advanced technology. They’ll be able to do things that we humans never could do.

And just what have humans been unable to do with their technology? Let’s return to the subject we started with: The failure of human engineers to design a particle accelerator with sufficient power to trigger the creation of a black hole.

We’ve already established that tuataras have the power to develop technology that is beyond anything that humans can imagine… and just what kind of technology have humans imagined? Particle accelerators that can trigger black holes, or even the unraveling of the fabric of the cosmos, that’s what. That’s exactly what the tuataras are working on, and they’re the species to get it done.

Government officials may be unwilling to speak about this threat, but I will issue this warning: If you see a tuatara at your local hardware store, call the police.

You know, Clinton, when you call someone else a liar, you need to be sure you are right.

“Sen. Obama consistently and falsely claims that he was a law professor.”

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=6752

“From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School…. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.”

http://www.law.uchicago.edu/media/index.html

Obama’s rubber. Clinton, you’re glue. It bounces off him and sticks to you.

The cease fire is over. Moqtada al-Sadr has gone from insurgent to government minister to insurgent again.

Whatever you think about al-Sadr, he has been calling for a solution based on diplomatic talks instead of fighting in the streets. Not Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki has been saying that he’s going to fight against al-Sadr “until the end”.

So guess whose side the United States has taken? Al-Maliki’s, of course. He’s the American puppet, after all.

The United States military has joined the Iraqi civil war between Al-Maliki’s militias and Al-Sadr’s militias. The US military is now hurling bombs into Iraqi cities, hoping to kill Iraqis aligned with Al-Sadr.

How is that going to help make Iraq more stable?

The fact that the U.S. military is taking the side of Al-Maliki in this civil war may end up helping Al-Sadr more than Al-Maliki. After all, three-quarters of Iraqis want the American military occupation to end, and want American soldiers out of Iraq. Making it clear that Al-Sadr is the top anti-American fighter may make him stronger, not weaker. Tens of thousands of Iraqi protesters took to the streets this week against Al-Maliki, not against Al-Sadr.

George W. Bush’s strategy in Iraq is as smooth as ever, which is to say, as rough as a mule ride into the Grand Canyon at night in a snowstorm with a saddle made of sandpaper.

Christians love to hear stories about how prayer affects people’s lives. Let me indulge them with this article, about an eleven year-old girl in Wisconsin, and her parents, and the power that prayer had in their lives.

It killed the girl.

Madeline Neumann grew increasingly ill over the space of a month, but her parents refused to take her to see a medical doctor, even after other family members begged them to do so.

To the end, even when Madeline Neumann had entered a coma, her parents insisted that the best thing to do was just to pray that God would intercede with his supernatural magical powers, and cure the girl. An ambulance was only sent to the house when the Madeline Neumann’s aunt made a telephone call without the parents’ permission. By the time the ambulance arrived, however, it was too late. Madeline Neumann was dead.

The death of their daughter was a powerful, concrete demonstration that prayer has no power. Sadly, Madeline Neumann’s parents don’t seem to have learned the lesson of the loss. The mother declares that “Only our faith in God is giving us strength at this time.”

Strength? I don’t see any strength in these parents. I see criminal negligence. Their faith in the magical powers of God is not giving them strength. That faith sent their daughter to her death.

The parents also say that “We know we did the best for our daughter we knew how to do.” Really? These people didn’t know how to drive their daughter to a doctor’s office when she was feeling sick for weeks on end? They didn’t know how to call an ambulance when their daughter went into a coma? Nonsense. Madeline Neumann’s parents knew how to better for their daughter, but they chose to follow weird supernatural beliefs instead.

Apparently, this couple has other children beside Madeline. Let’s hope that those children don’t become sick until they are able to leave home and learn some more sense than what they’ve been taught at home.

All Easter weekend long, we heard radio voices weighing in on Obama. How do white people feel about his blackness, how do black people feel about his whiteness? Absent from the discussion is any awareness of what he’s actually done. Where has he landed his punches? During Obama’s brief political career thus far, what issues has he acted on? Much has been made of his pastor’s disparaging comments about America and 9/11. So has Mr. Obama spent his young senate days hanging with the fringe wing of the Democratic party that pushes 9/11 conspiracy theories? Has he lent his voice to the view that 9/11 was Americas just comeuppance? No. If anything, Mr. Obama was a bit timid as a young senator, watching in dismay as his idealistic bits of legislation got watered down over time.

Obama himself is a bit of a Rorschach Test, in that commentators superimpose on him what they think should be there. For this reason, Obama is often linked to Black Liberation Theology. This is silly, because he was never a radical. In his youth, he never went through a Chicago Seven phase, all fist-pumping, Bobby Seal haircuts and incendiary speeches. If anything, Obama was an eager but cautious Harvard law student with an eye on social justice issues, but apt to keep his options open. Not “options open” in a cynical sense, not soft-pedaling his views, but rather, living according to a belief that brash, extreme opinions only alienate those who might otherwise be your allies. Like many young black leaders, Obama saw the limitations of racially-charged politics, the futility of replacing one racial stereotype with another. Thus, he would find ways to discuss inflammatory issues in reasonable, nuanced tones.

It looks like this year, America has a candidate that prefers to shed light, rather than heat. Are we up for it? If Obama loses, it won’t be because he’s black. It’ll be because America’s not ready for a President that talks to you as if you have a brain.

Last night Barack Obama campaign staffer Christopher Hass admitted that Senator Obama relies on the help of his subordinates to run his campaign for him:

“Thank you to everyone who helped canvass, made phone calls, and contributed to one of the largest voter registration drives that Pennsylvania has ever seen, resulting in a record number of registered Pennsylvania Democrats.”

See? Barack Obama is a weak, weak man who cannot be Commander In Chief from Day One! He can’t even campaign for President on his own. He needs helpers to go out and make telephone calls to make things easier for him!

They said this on Barack Obama’s official campaign web site!

Barack Obama isn’t strong enough to stand up to his opponents. Also, he is being too tough on Hillary Clinton.

Furthermore, Barack Obama was made a secret genetic Muslim as a toddler, in a ceremony by his atheist father. That’s why I’m glad that Hillary Clinton has exposed Barack Obama’s terrible involvement in the Christian Trinity Church in Chicago.

Finally, Obama’s feet smell… and he doesn’t like oatmeal!

Obama bad man!

Network Solutions is a company of wimps.

A web site, fitnathemovie.com, was registered through Network Solutions, but Network Solutions blocked access to the web site before there could even be a real web site uploaded onto the net. Why? Network Solutions apparently has a group of employees who are in the position of guessing what a web site might say in the future, and then recommending censorship of the site if they suspect that this future content might cause “unrest”.

The idea is that because fitnathemovie.com had the potential, in the future, to publish anti-Islam material, it would be best just to not allow anybody anywhere in the world to see the site, out of fear that Muslims somewhere, sometime, might get offended, and then might be unrestful.

According to the Washington Post, “a company spokeswoman said Sunday evening that Network Solutions decided to pull the plug on it due to the potential unrest that could follow if Wilders followed through on his pledge to post his film on the site.”

COULD lead to POTENTIAL unrest? Oh, what a low standard for running and hiding under the table! What a sad decline there has been in Silicon Valley culture, now that Internet companies are wetting their pants in fear over the possibility that people speaking their minds on the Internet might lead to unrest.

They’re worries about potential unrest? Since when is the Internet for resting? Last I checked, AfternoonNap.com is not the most popular web site around.

What’s next? Is Network Solutions going to start refusing to host anti-Christian web sites? Refuse to allow anti-Buddhist domain names to be registered? Block WhoIs information for anti-Hindu sites?

Oh, look! At Metro, there’s an article that claims that Jesus Christ has indeed risen again… with his head reincarnated as a dog’s anus. Come on, Network Solutions! Aren’t you going to censor that? Aren’t you going to smack that down?

Why stop at religion, Network Solutions? Why not ban web sites critical of John McCain? Political arguments can lead to unrest, right? Well, if potential unrest is now the criterion for censorship by Network Solutions, then all political web sites must go!

The action of Network Solutions reminds me of nothing so much as the action of the government of China to refuse access to the web sites that have content it doesn’t approve of.

I hereby call upon Network Solutions to change the title of W. Roy Dunbar, its CEO, to General Secretary.

Censor THIS, Network Solutions.

I don’t know if I support the ideas that the people behind fitnathemovie.com were planning on publishing. But then, I can’t know that, given that those ideas were never allowed to get online.

Let’s put this plainly: Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius has saved a huge part of the United States from filth.

The air that blows across Kansas eventually blows over most of the continental United States. If Kansas keeps that air clean, then the millions of Americans who live downwind from Kansas. If Kansas spews filth into the air, then the millions of Americans who live downwind from Kansas will breathe that filth.

On Friday, Governor Sebelius vetoed legislation that would have allowed the spewing of filth into America’s air, and into America’s lungs, from new dirty coal-fired power plants that would have been built in Kansas.

Thank you, on behalf of downwind America, to Kathleen Sebelius, for protecting us from this filth.

What’s really going on at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City?

The cover stories for the repeated failures of the opera Tristan und Isolde are appearing increasingly thin. Five different actors have had to be used in the title roles of Tristan and Isolde:

Gary Lehman
Ben Heppner
Mac Master
Deborah Voigt
Janice Baird

Now, there is to be a sixth: Roger Dean Smith… or so he says.

What’s going on? Performances of Tristan und Isolde have had to be cancelled more than once, due to “mishaps”.

The tenor has fallen off the stage. Scenery has nearly killed the singers. There have been mysterious plagues that the publicists are dismissing as “stomach ailments” and “viruses”.

Nobody believes it, of course, and Manhattan’s elite opera scene is abuzz with rumor of what is really happening behind the curtain of the newest production of Tristan und Isolde.

To understand today’s dramatic events, one needs to go back to the time of the composition of Tristan und Isolde. It was in 1849, and Richard Wagner had to flee the city of Dresden because of what the establishment describes, euphemistically, as The May Uprising. Conventional history says that the May Uprising was a political battle between a repressive government and a mob seeking democratic rule. Conventional history is wrong.

The truth is that Richard Wagner had been dabbling in ancient folklore a little bit too deeply, and he came across some folkways that should have been forgotten: The dark arts of necromancy. Richard Wagner thought that he was writing a new opera to celebrate the culture of teutonic peoples, but really, he was casting a black spell to raise the dead. The May Uprising was not about politics. The truth is that the battle was an attempt to defend the living residents of Dresden from a zombie seige.

Just look at the history books. After the zombies started rising out of Dresden’s cemeteries, Richard Wagner ran away, because he didn’t know how to control his creations. The government soldiers in Dresden are then recorded as making a last stand in the Zeughaus.

Do you know what Zeughaus means, when translated into English? It means “House of the Undead”. The government soldiers went to the heart of the problem, to find the answer for the dreadful question: How do you kill somebody when they’re already dead?

The answer to that question was lost to history, but obviously they found some kind of way to control the zombies.

Richard Wagner, in the meantime, set up his operations again in Zurich, and this time he finished what he had started. He finished a final, revised draft of Tristan und Isolde, which still included some elements of necromancy, but not as much as in his first draft.

So, that’s what the people at the Met are facing right now: Black magic. It’s not as strong as when Richard Wagner first tried it in Dresden, but it is potentially deadly nonetheless.

I can’t tell you what’s going to happen for certain, but I can tell you this: There are just a few more performances of Tristan und Isolde at the Met, and I won’t be setting foot in Manhattan until after they are done.