Isqua Istari

By official mandate, there shall be a new Rule:

No more IHOP coffee for Scholl. Ever.

My name is Toad, and I approve this message.

In Electrical Power Systems yesterday, Dr. Graff said something that came to be of interest to me. In a devotion about faith, he off-hand mentioned Governmental control of information to the public, and wound up leading himself to mentioning the “display cities” in the USSR, and finally to observing that America itself was showing many signs of descending into a Communist state. What got me, though, was that he added, “…scary, isn’t it?” to the end of the sentence.

My first thought after he said that was a slightly mocking, “No, it’s not scary. It’s normal.” Then I thought a bit more, and after wondering if it was a bad thing that I was so unperturbed at the mention of America’s downfall, I realized that it is scary to Dr. Graff (who may be as old as the hills themselves) and so many others because they might actually remember a time when America resembled Communism a great deal less than it currently does.

The issue that Dr. Graff highlighted about Communist states (and by implication, America), was information control–not letting the outside know what a wreck the inside is (ala display cities in the USSR), and hiding the real workings of the upper echelons from the “little people,” things of that nature. I would suggest that America probably already delves significantly into the latter sin, but I won’t go getting into too many conspiracy theories. I just found it interesting that I was reminded again of America’s decline–no, willing descent–into its own annihilation.

Isn’t it interesting how Satan can take good things, good people, and good ideas, and by exploiting the greed of a few bad apples, turn it into the exact opposite of its intended form?

Do you have any little sisters? If you don’t, I would contend that you’re missing out. Of course, if you have any older siblings, you might contend that I‘m the one missing out, since I’ve never had any of those. That, however, is neither here nor there. I am here to let you all know that my little sister has her very own blog, a fact and relative accomplishment that makes me rather proud. So, if you feel so led, cruise over there and take a look at some of the things she has to say.

Due to some restructuring on Javier’s server, I will be moving my web hosting to another friend’s server over the coming week or two. What this should mean for you is, practically, nothing at all. What it might means is up to a day or two (probably in a week’s time or so) when hawkbats.com and its subdirectories will not load properly for you and yours.

What this does NOT mean is that e-mail service interruption for those who use hawkbats.com for their e-mail service will be interrupted. I will be working things out such that nothing at all should change for you, with the possible exception of needing to change around some settings in your own e-mail clients.

I’ll be providing more updates as things progress. For now, enjoy our relatively static content.

I rummaged around on Yahoo! and Google a bit, and found a cache of this post. I will also include a few of the comments (8 of 21) after the post itself.

In order to properly understand the context of this post, you will need to read this post on Scholl’s blog, and the following comments. I wrote this originally as a comment for that blog post, but when I saw how long it was, I felt it would be better treated over here.

I believe that children should be protected, even �pre-emptively,� even if that protection must be from their parents. The Government, however, has no place in that protection. The Bible tells us as Christians to care for widows and orphans, and I would suggest that unfortunates such as the children of mentally unstable individuals could/should be considered such for the purposes of our care. That said, we as Christians do indeed lack the legal capacity to exert such care in many situations, since, as Ziggy pointed out, taking another�s child is kidnapping, even in our legal system.

The issue at hand is indeed something like what ryoga mentioned: we can�t stop bad parents from happening. The murder of Ronnie Paris Jr�s son would never have happened if Ronnie Paris Jr. never had a son. In a world where everyone was accountable to each other, that might not be so hard to prevent. In that world, too, in the unfortunate eventuality that such prevention failed, classification and care as an orphan for such children would not be a difficult concept. In that statement, we see the root of our problems: ��where everyone was accountable�� Our world has distanced itself and all of its constituents from accountability in a very effective manner. Not only is nothing �your fault� (poor Ronnie, he has a mental disorder. He didn�t want to kill his son, he just couldn�t help himself!), but anything that MIGHT be your fault somehow falls to the Government to amend, whereas Governments should in fact have little to no intervention on such levels, ever. The idea of Government as a protector of liberty has been twisted into the Government taking blame for us, and making laws in vain attempts to inhibit stupidity.

This is the reason that Ziggy�s position seems so far fetched to so many people. �What? How could the Government NOT save the children of the inept? How could it be so careless?� The answer obvious in Ziggy�s (and my) mind is that the Government has NO PLACE in such situations, ever. Any place that they do have there should be removed. God never intended for an impersonal entity to �care� for the unfortunate. God never intended for the Government to feed, clothe, and protect us. THAT�S OUR JOB. God DID intend for his people to care for their own, and for their neighbors. It is this example that we see repeated throughout both testaments. If I notice that my neighbor�s child is not being cared for, I should confront my neighbor about it. And if he does nothing, I should take that child in as my own and care for it myself. That doesn�t work anymore. The Government is too entwined in the minutia of private life for good people like Ziggy to even suggest that things should be different without being mocked and challenged by the intellectual elite, even other Christians.

Do I think it realistic to expect a return to the people caring for each other, as God intended? Certainly not. That will never happen; such is the extent of Satan�s victory over our society. Does that mean I can condone Government taking a role in raising children? Certainly not. Just because things are a certain way does not mean they are right. Just because such is inevitable does not mean I have to let it come with no resistance. Our system of government is itself a willing and useful tool for Satan to strike at the people of our world, and as I experience more of it, I am only more convinced of the evil that a once-great ideal has become. No, Ziggy is right. The Government has no place in our families, or in the lives of our children. Governments are for military protection and legal mediation; not parenting.

This begs the question, though, �what SHOULD we do in today�s society?� I don�t know. I do know that we should try to affect those that we can, those that we do exert influence over, towards the right thing, and try to do the right thing ourselves. I am forced to forfeit the battle for our country and our society as a whole, but it is my hope that when it falls, for fall it will, there will be those left who think like Ziggy to start things over.
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Okay, so it’s probably actually old and dusty. Regardless of its hygiene, however, I found a backup that I made that was surprisingly more up-to-date than I expected. I remembered the occasion on which this backup was made, but thought that I had opted not to make it (don’t ask me why). Turns out that I did make it, I just had to find it. Find it I have, and now all but two or three of our old posts are once again available for your perusal.

The request for the text of any missing posts still stands, especially the post “Governmental Parenting.” If you have that, feel free to e-mail me or comment it here. Also, the backup was a database backup, and did not include the customized style sheet, so I think we’ll be sticking with the new look. Suggestions, comments, and so forth are always welcome!

Well, the latest is in from all fronts: apparently, spykids hosed the forum system I use for my WoW Guild as well (which fortunately was an easy fix, and gave me a good excuse to update to the newest phpBB), and Jav doesn’t have any backups for my database. So, we start over. I found this theme, LastRegrets, and Jeff and I rather like it, but if you find something else that you think we just must take a look at, let us know and we will do so. Bear in mind that I’m quite the fan of a left-hand sidebar, so if you tell me to look at something with a right-hand sidebar, it would have to be really good to get more than a glance from me.

If you happen to have any of my old posts cached, I’d gladly take them (particularly some of the more recent ones). The Araben story I have, and I’ll repost it when I’m less angsty.

Sometime during the night, a “clever” individual saw fit to replace several of the blog files with the phrase “spykids pwnz you”. While the movie by the same name is entertaining, especially for, well, kids, I was unappreciative of spykids’ apparent “pwnz”ing. I took the opportunity to upgrade to WordPress 1.5.2, and all should have been right in the world again.

However, the upgrade tool hated me. And if it wasn’t the upgrade tool, I don’t know WHAT it was, other than that it wasn’t me. When I got the Blog back to something that would actually load up and look like something intelligible, the database was, well, empty, and all was NOT right in the world again. There may have actually been wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Sadly, I have not lately been a clever Toad, and my database backups are sorrowfully outdated, and restoring to them would be not unlike starting over with nothing on the blog. I’m getting in touch with the server admin, and hoping he has something a bit more up-to-date than I do. I’m also a lazy Toad, and an angry Toad, and don’t really feel like piecing my exquisitely altered simple-green style sheet back together color by color, and am hoping Jav has a backup of that file, since apparently I never made one. This, too, causes me bitterness. Just in case Jav does NOT have a backup of my style sheet, any suggestions as to a new theme would be greatly appreciated, because getting all those colors the way we had them took Jeff and me a good couple hours of edit, upload, refresh ad nauseum. You can search for such themes by googling phrases such as “wordpress themes.” Figure that one out.

Beyond the link below is the first chapter of a story that I’ve been writing over the past several weeks. Something unique about this story is that I never really sat down and thought about it, the words just came to me, and I watched the story unfold as I wrote it, almost like the story wrote itself, and just used me to hold the pencil. A few little parts of it I thought about, but almost everything was purely in the context of the story, I really didn’t have to force anything on this at all. There are also some interesting analogies in the gender and order that I picked for the elements, which has actually taught me a lot, as I’ve thought about it. I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to suggest a title in the language of the story.

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For those of you that noticed the green hairy comment spam that cropped up while my ‘net connection decided to suck, it has been removed, all some-hundred seen and unseen spams, and the filter has been further updated with spam-blocking information. If any of you know a comment spammer, I would like to point you here.