Thanks in advance.
Thanks to all who registered their opinion, especially the one who didn't like it.
Friday, September 23, 2005
[$] Because I have to know
I have opened up a survey about my blog, and I want you to take it. I will close the survey on Friday.
Take my survey and tell me what you think. I am especially interested in the international (non-US) visitors to this site. The survey literally doesn't take more than 4 minutes, is 9 questions total, and does not require you to log in or accept a cookie (as far as I know).
Thanks in advance.
Thanks to all who registered their opinion, especially the one who didn't like it.
Thanks in advance.
Thanks to all who registered their opinion, especially the one who didn't like it.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
[?] It's 4 PM
My 6-year-old's soccer team plays its first game tonight.
I'm going home. We play at 5:30 PM CT. Think about me running up and down the field trying to get them all facing the right direction as you eat supper tonight.
ALSO: I would like to say that the UK is visiting my site more often than the intransigent infidels who live in what is sometimes called the "mountain time zone" here in the US. Shaddout to Manchester.
I'm going home. We play at 5:30 PM CT. Think about me running up and down the field trying to get them all facing the right direction as you eat supper tonight.
ALSO: I would like to say that the UK is visiting my site more often than the intransigent infidels who live in what is sometimes called the "mountain time zone" here in the US. Shaddout to Manchester.
[#] The watchword of the day:
"Don't get stuck on stupid."I thought that we could start a trend with "he went all Tom Cruise on him", but I am afraid that "don't get stuck on stupid" has a lot more beans in the chili.
I have no idea what the religious or political affiliation of RadioBlogger is, but I'm going all Tom Cruise co-belligerent with him. "Don't get stuck on stupid" should be a t-shirt, or a flag or something.
[*] Call the accountants -- inventory the jokes
I came to work this morning with optimism that it would not come to this because I'm a 40-year-old man and Dave Armstrong is about the same age (I think Armstrong is older, but may the saints forbid that I attest to a fact which is questionable about DA), and you'd think that we would at least have a basic ability to read to share between the two of us.
Unfortunately, that's not the case. Armstrong has this to offer this morning:
Now look: being defensive about how much you post is one thing. I personally have no shame about how much I post because I am keenly aware that the more I post the more people read, and I am a self-confessed stats junkie. I jones for stats. I have track marks on my keyboard that are the telltale sign of stats abuse. But some people (and I'm not talking about Armstrong here) realize that they post too much stuff and need to curb their enthusiasm -- and when you bring it up, they make excuses about why this week or that week was a text waterfall. They get defensive.
It's another thing simply to have no sense of humor -- even if you take offense to the joke. For example, if I said to Pecadillo, "Dude: the story about your saggy skin was funny, but tell the truth: you used to be a girl, and those are stretch marks from the family of 6 you gave birth to while you were a Mormon wife in rural Utah." I can see why someone would take offense to that joke for a lot of reasons: transsexuality blasphemes God; Mormon marriage practices in rural Utah are an affront to Christian marriage ethics; the issue of child brides is not very funny, either. So the right response to that joke is, "cent, that's not funny because it violates the Eph 5 standard for Christian conduct. You have just made a mockery of your own confession of faith and should repent." The matter is not that I got my facts wrong: I made an offensive joke. Because who in their right mind would believe that Pecadillo was ever a girl? Should we try to prove he was never a girl in order to say, "I'm offended by that joke"?
But for Armstrong, a statement made as a clear and obvious joke has to be scrutinized through all manner of scientific research in order to prove, "By the league of Christian intellectuals, I have never blogged 50,000 words in a week in my life! Forsooth, I am not the blow-hard, but you and all your mockers and scorners are, in fact, much more blow-hardy than I!"
So trying to decipher his methodology is completely pointless -- we might as well concede that fact that he has used the upstanding and legally-scrupulous firm of Stephen L. Nelson, CPA, PLLC of Redmond, WA, to tabulate his results. When he can't distinguish between sarcastic exaggeration and legitimate facts of the matter, there is no sense in dealing with facts. There is a deeper problem -- which cannot be named or else it is slanderous and mean-spirited -- that ought to be dealt with, but after years of offering solutions to that problem there's not sense in bringing it up again.
Unfortunately, that's not the case. Armstrong has this to offer this morning:
You know something? I did say, "50,000+ words per week via the internet." No doubt. You can find it right here. However, it would be important to notice that what I said wasActually, it's just as fun to compare numbers with Frank Turk. Remember, he said that I put out "50,000+ words per week via the internet." 4,993 is a measly 10% of that (minimum) total. Given Frank's propensity for tall tales, I guess being off by a factor of ten is within the range of the expected norm, in his fantasy-land whopper-world.
There is no such person as Dave Armstrong. He is a conspiracy of Jesuits working as a group to turn out 50,000+ words per week via the internet. And as we all know, you can't put a Jesuit conspiracy out of business.Thus, rather than saying, "it is astounding that, after much research, I have determined that David Tiberius Armstrong, driver of delivery vehicles and much-feared Catholic apologist, produces a minimum of 50,000 words each and every week, with his most prolific week being the week of May 8th, 2005 with ###,### words, including number groups and title headings," what I said was, "Phil -- Armstrong is a joke, and I'm going to make fun of him by calling him a Jesuit conspiracy to flood the internet with text."
Now look: being defensive about how much you post is one thing. I personally have no shame about how much I post because I am keenly aware that the more I post the more people read, and I am a self-confessed stats junkie. I jones for stats. I have track marks on my keyboard that are the telltale sign of stats abuse. But some people (and I'm not talking about Armstrong here) realize that they post too much stuff and need to curb their enthusiasm -- and when you bring it up, they make excuses about why this week or that week was a text waterfall. They get defensive.
It's another thing simply to have no sense of humor -- even if you take offense to the joke. For example, if I said to Pecadillo, "Dude: the story about your saggy skin was funny, but tell the truth: you used to be a girl, and those are stretch marks from the family of 6 you gave birth to while you were a Mormon wife in rural Utah." I can see why someone would take offense to that joke for a lot of reasons: transsexuality blasphemes God; Mormon marriage practices in rural Utah are an affront to Christian marriage ethics; the issue of child brides is not very funny, either. So the right response to that joke is, "cent, that's not funny because it violates the Eph 5 standard for Christian conduct. You have just made a mockery of your own confession of faith and should repent." The matter is not that I got my facts wrong: I made an offensive joke. Because who in their right mind would believe that Pecadillo was ever a girl? Should we try to prove he was never a girl in order to say, "I'm offended by that joke"?But for Armstrong, a statement made as a clear and obvious joke has to be scrutinized through all manner of scientific research in order to prove, "By the league of Christian intellectuals, I have never blogged 50,000 words in a week in my life! Forsooth, I am not the blow-hard, but you and all your mockers and scorners are, in fact, much more blow-hardy than I!"
So trying to decipher his methodology is completely pointless -- we might as well concede that fact that he has used the upstanding and legally-scrupulous firm of Stephen L. Nelson, CPA, PLLC of Redmond, WA, to tabulate his results. When he can't distinguish between sarcastic exaggeration and legitimate facts of the matter, there is no sense in dealing with facts. There is a deeper problem -- which cannot be named or else it is slanderous and mean-spirited -- that ought to be dealt with, but after years of offering solutions to that problem there's not sense in bringing it up again.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
[#] Culture Wars and Anti-Catholicism
This text was originally posted in the Catholic Answers discussion forums (May 31,2004), and I found it cached on Google. Thank heavens for the Google cache!
This topic has a particular interest for me because I have myself been branded, at various times over the last 5 years, an “anti-catholic”. I have been told that the term originates in a work entitled Culture Wars by James Davison Hunter, and that Hunter’s work outlines a particular brand of hatred on the part of Protestants against Catholics which is unsubstantiated and irrational.
Culture Wars outlines the roots of anti-catholicism thus:
Prof. Hunter is obliging enough to tell us in the very next paragraph:
And in that, Hunter describes the tension to spill over into political and social conflict:
It is in this context that Hunter uses the term “anti-Catholicism”. Because the majority – the vast majority – of immigrants to the United States were Protestants of one stripe or another, their attitude toward Catholics – based on the mutual attitude of Catholics toward them – was hardly a rosey, philadelphial view. This view only escalated over time, and resulted in may abuses, including hundreds of scandalous accounts of “popish” behavior and slanted media reporting which resulted in numerous riots and personal attacks against Catholics in the nineteenth century (Hunter, 36).
There is no doubt that Hunter either coins or simply applies the term “Anti-Catholicism” in his work, but the question is: what is Hunter describing? Is he describing the inherently-Protestant theological view that Catholics are heretics, or is he describing the political and social upheaval that resulted when the dispute over theology turned, in popular hands, into a reason to discriminate against a man for an honest education or the right to gain employment for a wage?
Clearly, Hunter thinks the dispute over theology is the root cause – but it is a two-sided cause. If he were writing a history of southern Europe, one has to wonder how he would have positioned the circumstances of Protestants given his brief description already cited. He does call the editorial policies of the Chicago Tribune and the substance of the “great school wars” “anti-Catholicism”, but does he qualify all Protestant theology as anti-Catholic?
Hardly. Even as Hunter develops his thesis that Protestant biases inhabited the political system, he makes this clear concession:
Let’s keep that in mind the next time someone wants to throw out the term “anti-Catholic”. I take a wholly-Protestant view of Catholic theology, but even I do no call for the disenfranchisement of Catholics. I don’t think you should go out and beat Catholics, nor rob them of their possessions, nor that you should slander them for things they have never done. And in that, I find the term “anti-Catholic” both reductive and inflammatory – because the term means “bigot”, and I am certain that one can hold Protestant views of Catholicism without being a bigot.
It’s an essay that, to this day, Armstrong overlooks. He does not address a single point made here, and relies on a single quote from Hunter, out of context, to simply whistle in the dark past this issue.
This topic has a particular interest for me because I have myself been branded, at various times over the last 5 years, an “anti-catholic”. I have been told that the term originates in a work entitled Culture Wars by James Davison Hunter, and that Hunter’s work outlines a particular brand of hatred on the part of Protestants against Catholics which is unsubstantiated and irrational.
Culture Wars outlines the roots of anti-catholicism thus:
Understanding the American experience even as late as the nineteenth century requires an understanding of the critical role played by anti-Catholicism in shaping the character of politics, public education, the media, and social reform. (Hunter, 35)Well, that’s pretty bad on the face of it, no? Anti-Catholicism shaped many of the major social structures of America all the way up through the nineteenth century – it must be a terrible thing! And let’s make an admission here: what Hunter is talking about here was a terrible thing. But how did it come into being, and in what environment did it exist?
Prof. Hunter is obliging enough to tell us in the very next paragraph:
Of course, the mutual hostility of Protestants and Catholics had been implacable since the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth century. For their rejection of church traditions and ecclesiastical authority, Protestants were regarded by Catholics as infidels who had abandoned the true faith, for their elevation of “arcane rituals” to the status of scriptural truth and for their elevation of papal authority to the status of the authority of Christ, Catholics were regarded by Protestants as heretics who had perverted the true faith.(Hunter, 35)[emph added]Notice that Hunter defines it in an environment of mutual disregard: it is not a matter of the poor victimized Catholics being treated badly by the damned insolent or ignorant (or both) Protestants: it is a matter of a foundational dispute between the two. The dispute is inherently theological, and in that it inherently poses the two sided in positions that cannot be reconciled: either one believes one set of truths or the other, but since they are contradictory they cannot both be right.
And in that, Hunter describes the tension to spill over into political and social conflict: … even after the age of religious wars had formally come to an end, the political tensions between these religious and cultural traditions continued to effect the cultural fabric of Western life. Prejudice, discrimination, and even physical violence were commonplace for the Protestant minorities in southern Europe … and the Catholic minorities in the North …(Hunter, 35-36)[emph added]So the phenomenon Hunter is describing here is not a matter of one-sided insular Protestant bigotry: it is a matter of mutual disregard which, after a century of overt war, turned to the quiet warfare of personal relationships. The hatred of Protestants for Catholics was equally matched by Protestant hatred by Catholics – and it was manifest on both sides in the political geographies where one side or the other was dominant.
It is in this context that Hunter uses the term “anti-Catholicism”. Because the majority – the vast majority – of immigrants to the United States were Protestants of one stripe or another, their attitude toward Catholics – based on the mutual attitude of Catholics toward them – was hardly a rosey, philadelphial view. This view only escalated over time, and resulted in may abuses, including hundreds of scandalous accounts of “popish” behavior and slanted media reporting which resulted in numerous riots and personal attacks against Catholics in the nineteenth century (Hunter, 36).
There is no doubt that Hunter either coins or simply applies the term “Anti-Catholicism” in his work, but the question is: what is Hunter describing? Is he describing the inherently-Protestant theological view that Catholics are heretics, or is he describing the political and social upheaval that resulted when the dispute over theology turned, in popular hands, into a reason to discriminate against a man for an honest education or the right to gain employment for a wage?Clearly, Hunter thinks the dispute over theology is the root cause – but it is a two-sided cause. If he were writing a history of southern Europe, one has to wonder how he would have positioned the circumstances of Protestants given his brief description already cited. He does call the editorial policies of the Chicago Tribune and the substance of the “great school wars” “anti-Catholicism”, but does he qualify all Protestant theology as anti-Catholic?
Hardly. Even as Hunter develops his thesis that Protestant biases inhabited the political system, he makes this clear concession:
At a more profound level, however, biblical theism gave Protestants, Catholics, and Jews many of the common ideals of public life. … the migration and resettlement of bonded groups in the new land made the biblical imagery of the Exodus seem to be a metaphor for the American experience as a whole.(Hunter, 71)It is the acceptance of the Bible as the unitive heritage of men who fear God that resolves their differences. That hardly sounds like a Catholic perspective: it sounds significantly Protestant. The doctrine of sola Scriptura – that Scripture alone has the authority to correct all other forms of authority, and that it alone in the normative standard – is not Catholic but Protestant, and it is this ideal of Scripture conforming the minds of men to which Hunter ascribes the basis and the ground of whatever resolution has occurred over time between the parties.
Let’s keep that in mind the next time someone wants to throw out the term “anti-Catholic”. I take a wholly-Protestant view of Catholic theology, but even I do no call for the disenfranchisement of Catholics. I don’t think you should go out and beat Catholics, nor rob them of their possessions, nor that you should slander them for things they have never done. And in that, I find the term “anti-Catholic” both reductive and inflammatory – because the term means “bigot”, and I am certain that one can hold Protestant views of Catholicism without being a bigot.
It’s an essay that, to this day, Armstrong overlooks. He does not address a single point made here, and relies on a single quote from Hunter, out of context, to simply whistle in the dark past this issue.
[*] It's a slow day, apparently ...
... because I find myself re-reading Vatican II documents and waiting for the Armstrong Gang to find its footing in its own arguments.
One of the interesting parts of Armstrong's salvo from this morning (he stayed up until 4:30 AM revising it -- which seems to me to be a little obsessive, although I'll hand it to him that he has only 2 typos) is his account of what triggered the recent pleasantries. He points us at PP's blog comments and discourses thus:
Don't believe me? Let's look:
Rhetorically, we have to ask Armstrong, "And you were hoping for flowers and a nice bottle of chiante for giving Holst the thumbs-up?" When has he ever, in the history of our acquaintance, responded positively to anything I have said to him? When? Even when I offered to make a flat-out apology for the wrong I have done to him (which I did make), there was nothing on his side to indicate that any civil exchange was possible.
Thus, for me to say, "PP: am I supposed to say something nice to Armstrong now, or should I just pretend that he didn't say anything to avoid making your blog the site of unpleasantries?" may bare passive-aggressive antagonism, but its meaning is born out in his follow-up. If I had said nothing, one would hope nothing would have followed. Unfortunately, I had the audacity to say that saying anything would render unpleasantries.
The worst part about this situation is that I have just hammered out about 1000 words (give or take) on this subject, and if Hurricane Armstrong is true to form, we can expect about 10,000 words (think about that a second: 10,000 words is almost 20 pages, single-spaced) back scolding me for having the audacity to reply to him.
One of the interesting parts of Armstrong's salvo from this morning (he stayed up until 4:30 AM revising it -- which seems to me to be a little obsessive, although I'll hand it to him that he has only 2 typos) is his account of what triggered the recent pleasantries. He points us at PP's blog comments and discourses thus:
I'll expand this paper if Frank issues a reply. His words will be in green.That's a WFW cut-and-paste from the comments log, right? No problem. I said what I said to PP, and of course that means that because I wasn't speaking directly to DA in a humble and contrite (let's not even say "affable", because that is impossible) manner, I was hurling insults at Armstrong.
Holst's the Planets was the first piece of classical music that ever made sense to me. Oddly enough, I was introduced to it by a Franciscan friar who was the encyclopedic horsepower behind the classical music show we produced at my college radio station. Good stuff.
Dave said...
Yeah, it's fabulous; one of my favorite classical pieces. I played Mars in my high school band (trombone). Good to agree on something for a change!
Dave said...
[dave = Dave Armstrong]
PP: am I supposed to say something nice to Armstrong now, or should I just pretend that he didn't say anything to avoid making your blog the site of unpleasantries?
Don't believe me? Let's look:
That's right, Frank (aka centuri0n). Heaven forbid that we ever talked like two normal, civilized human beings, even on something as uncontroversial as classical music. That would put you out, wouldn't it?Actually, it would not have put me out, and honestly I didn't have much else to say about the matter. It seems, however, that one of us wanted to make sure the other one didn't miss who was saying what. Dude: I'm not the one who sometimes goes by "dave" with no profile available on Blogger and then has to come back with, "oh by the way, it's me who has never said a nice word about you."
Rhetorically, we have to ask Armstrong, "And you were hoping for flowers and a nice bottle of chiante for giving Holst the thumbs-up?" When has he ever, in the history of our acquaintance, responded positively to anything I have said to him? When? Even when I offered to make a flat-out apology for the wrong I have done to him (which I did make), there was nothing on his side to indicate that any civil exchange was possible.Thus, for me to say, "PP: am I supposed to say something nice to Armstrong now, or should I just pretend that he didn't say anything to avoid making your blog the site of unpleasantries?" may bare passive-aggressive antagonism, but its meaning is born out in his follow-up. If I had said nothing, one would hope nothing would have followed. Unfortunately, I had the audacity to say that saying anything would render unpleasantries.
So, feeling the terrifying discomfort of such a prospect, you opt for your usual obnoxious cant (discussion of Holst as - remarkably enough - a pretext for inevitable "unpleasantries"). You take a good (or at least harmless) thing and immediately make it a dividing point. Or maybe I am somehow a dishonest scoundrel for liking The Planets?Actually, that wasn't my point at all. My point was that saying anything to Armstrong would have ended in unpleasantries because it doesn't matter what I say to him. There are no exchanges on record between us ending in anything but DA ranting like Tom Cruise (HT: Daniel) because I am such a malcontent.
Yet you and others of your general belief-system wonder why I would ever want to cease trying to dialogue (DIALOGUE, not merely talk, as presently) with anti-Catholics.Notice something subtle here: it is not merely about me but about me and "others of [my] general belief-system", which is, of course, anti-Catholicism. If I snark DA, I am the example which proves the rule. If DA flies off the handle because I said, in effect, "nothing good will come of me saying anything nice to DA", (and that is what I said -- the choices were "say something nice" or "say nothing") and DA stays up until Oh-dark-Hundred hammering out a (now get this:) 4,879-word reproachment to me, he's a clean sheet -- in fact, he's the wronged party.
Do you think that if you (and those like you) and I can't even talk pleasantly as two pagans or heathens could and would, about MUSIC, that we could ever constructively discuss theology?The reality is, as I said in the post which lit DA's fuse, there is nothing I can say to him that will not end in unpleasantries. Nothing. The words don't exist; the sentence is unwritable in any language. If I said to him that Jn 11:35 said, "Jesus wept," I would expect a 4-part rebuttal of the controversial and subversive nature of my remarks.
Of course the answer is no, and I know this not just abstractly, but as the result of some 150 or more attempts at doing so, over 15 years. YOU may think that is cowardice. In fact, it is simply common sense and wise stewardship of the time that God has given me.OK, THAT was the actually-interesting part of DA's post because you have to keep something in mind: my 4-point 319-word response to him (you saw it here at PP's blog) didn't say any of that stuff. What I said to the Motor City Apologist is that (1) ct is a troll and a repudiate whatever that person said, (2) I didn't even ponder the implications of the poster named "dave" until "dave" made sure we all knew who he was, (3) his use of the word "anti-catholic" is uncalled-for and the basis of my continuing disdain for him, and (4) he's a class-5 wind storm looking for a reason to touch down.
The worst part about this situation is that I have just hammered out about 1000 words (give or take) on this subject, and if Hurricane Armstrong is true to form, we can expect about 10,000 words (think about that a second: 10,000 words is almost 20 pages, single-spaced) back scolding me for having the audacity to reply to him.
[@] Lite reading at Coffee Break
For those of you who have found yourselves in the sad position of debating anything with a Catholic internet e-pologist, I have a very nice link for you to review. I am also remiss in noting that this link would not be possible without the tireless efforts of skyman`, who has lost more valuable links to apologetic information than I have ever seen. Public thanks are warranted.And in offering that link, I am making a stone-cold serious offer: someone who can produce the Sextus Decretum of Alexander IV can receive $25 from me via paypal. First person only, winner to be determined by system timestamps in this blog or via e-mail. Latin originals are 100% viable entities.
Age quod agis.
[*] Detroit: Rock City
Apparently either my browser needs restarting or HaloScan is having indigestion this morning. Before troubleshooting, my reply to Dave Armstrong is a blog post rather than a comment in the meta. Sorry 'bout that, folks.
Three comments:If anything else needs to be said, I'm sure it will find its way out into the blogosphere.
(1) Your new blog template completely blows away the ghastly old one you used for years. No idea when you updated, but credit where credit is due.(2) It is sporting of you to cite scripture to try to quicken my conscience. I wonder: if I cited Magisterial degrees (the binding ones, not the infallible ones) that forbid lay apologetics, would that quicken yours?
(3) Don't lose sleep over blogging. That's not healthy. As I scan my mental list of people who have lost sleep over writing that I know personally, they all used the excuse "many people do it", meaning "many great writers do it." Funny how none of them -- and some of them are my friends -- are great writers. My suggestion is that you grab an extra 3 hours sleep each night (enough to add a decent REM cycle) and try again. Even if your prose does not improve, your general vigor will.
And that's all I have time for, Armstrong. I'm sure there's an argument from my silence on some things with which you can have a field day. I'm sure your blog-spectators will come up with many, many original plays on words ("Turk ... a jerk" -- gosh: he stayed up to 1:50 AM to write that? Do you see what I was getting at, above?) to denigrate my response. I'm also sure that having a discussion which attempts to go past superficial with you is like trying to open a can of peas with my teeth: I am certain it can be done, I am certain that what is in there is technically "good for me", but I am certain that what's inside is not worth that kind of effort.
And I kept it just over 300 words. See what a good night's sleep can do for you?
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
[?] Complaints about the music
First of all, there is nothing wrong with my theme song. Any more complaints about "the music" and I'll set it on max volume, auto play, eternal loop with NO CONTROL FEATURE. (yeah, right: I'm a stats junkie. If I did that my stats would fall harder than a pentecostal for a word of prophecy. I won't do that)Anyway, there's nothing wrong with my theme music, and it
OK, OK. Sheesh.
[?] an eBay exclusive
I post this here only because this guy claims to be in NW Arkansas. A man's got to help a brother out.
Groovie.
Groovie.
As you undoubtedly noticed, I like comics. I wouldn't call myself a "fan boy" because I don't give a flying FOOM what they are worth. That said, almost all the images on my blog are scanned from comics I own -- so they are scanned from comics I own and are used under what I assume is 
