watchdog.net/c/stop-oclc

OCLC, the not-for-profit that provides library services around the world, has gone too far. Originally, it was a library collaborative — one library could catalog a book, upload it to OCLC, and then other libraries could save time by reusing the catalog information. But as the price of such technology has fallen, its prices have risen. It charges membership fees, record retrieval fees, user support fees, and fees for all sorts of additional services. But now it’s gone a step too far — it wants to set the terms of use for every library record ever retrieved through OCLC, so that it can maintain its monopoly in the field. In a very real sense, they’re trying to steal our libraries. We have to make them stop — sign this petition.

For more information, see this wiki page: OCLC Policy Change.

——–

ok, so that was a canned message. but i did sign it. thanks to aaron swartz, with whom i disagree about a great many things, but am aligned for this particular cause.

but at the same time, i agree with Josh’s post (and those in his comments) that a lot of people, namely: Christians, make too much of the abortion issue.

i know, sounds like a contradiction. let me explain.

meeting the minimum

to me, this issue is intensely important. and while i understand that the president is not able to have much of a direct influence on the laws regarding abortion, the fact remains that the issue itself is of extreme personal importance (i could argue that it is of extreme importance societally as well, but for now we’ll keep it personal since that’s all i can actually prove).

the issue is so important to me that it serves as a baseline. its not “if you have the right view on abortion i will most assuredly vote for you”, but rather, “we need to agree on some really foundational issues before we can talk about you running my country”.

if you think about it, everybody does this. every single person in this country voted for someone that agreed with them on a foundational set of issues.

allow me to prove it.

a ridiculous example

back up to the campaign trail. imagine that Obama’s platform was exactly the same as it was, but for one minor difference: he believed that women should not be in leadership. in other words, a woman’s place is to serve the men, and thus she shouldn’t be in charge of anything larger than a classroom.

would you have voted for him?

ridiculous i know. but think about it! how much influence does the president really have over whether or not women are in charge of things across the country? and take it one step further: what if he said that he only “personally believed” that women were subservient, but that he would leave any actual gender-in-leadership decisions “up to the States”?

i’m guessing (hoping, even) that he wouldn’t have even gained any traction. and that you (probably) wouldn’t have voted for him. or even listened to him, at least after he said something so fundamentally demeaning.

but why not? you agree with him on practically everything else! and he’s the young candidate who can actually bring change!

doesn’t matter. you would disagree with him on something so foundationally important that he couldn’t sound like anything other than a lunatic.

i know the example is ludicrous. but it’s ludicrous for a reason. when a candidate looks me in the eyes and says “the life of an unborn child is the property of the mother, to do with as she wills”, it’s hard for me to listen to anything else they have to say. to me, that’s as ludicrous as saying “women should never leave the kitchen”.

more clarification

let me clarify, again, that agreeing with me on abortion absolutely does not guarantee you my vote. all it means is that you get to have a conversation with me about other issues over which i will be somewhat more negotiable. if we agree on abortion but disagree on just about everything else (taxes, environment, death penalty, foreign policy, etc), sorry, but i’m still not voting for you. being pro-life doesn’t get you into the People I Voted For club. it just gets you on the Potentials list.

we all do that exact same thing, just with different issues. we all expect our representatives to agree with us, fundamentally, on basic human rights. blacks, whites, women, everybody’s equal.  we expect our representatives to agree that using their position solely to gain excessive wealth is wrong. we expect our representatives to agree that selling dope to 9 year olds is wrong.

if someone comes along that disagrees with any of those things (and for some reason decides to bring that up during their campaign), there’s no way we’re voting for them. we’re not even going to listen to them. if you think selling dope to 9 year olds is OK and you say it out loud, you can forget your presidential bid.

bottoms up!

what i’m talking about is a Bottom-Up approach to selecting a candidate. the candidate must meet a certain number of basic (personal) qualifications before we’ll even consider what they have to say on everything else.

the problem is when someone comes along with a Top-Down approach. a pastor says “because this candidate is pro-life, you MUST vote for them.” or a person goes down a ballot checking off names that have an R next to them, because they think the republicans are the pro-life party, and that’s all that matters.

this is the problem Josh (and the others) are actually so tired of. i think it’s important to make the distinction, though.

i think we (meaning Josh and myself and other “intellectually-enlightened” Christians) need to be careful of how we judge people that appear to be Top-Down voters. you cannot say with certainty that “most Christians (or right-wingers) vote with abortion as their only deciding factor”. note that the effect of the Top-Down voter and the Bottom-Up voter is the same: they both only vote for pro-lifers. so just because i’ve always voted for pro-lifers does not mean that is the only issue i consider. it just means its the first.

objections

“but if everybody voted Bottom-Up, there’s a lot of times we couldn’t even vote!” yes, exactly. which is why i didn’t, this election. i’m a Bottom-Up voter. but let’s think seriously about the mindset this objection creates. basically what you’re saying is that “you have to vote for somebody”. that is exactly the mindset that creates Top-Down voters. if you have to vote for somebody, every time, and one candidate out of the two sounds like a lunatic to you because of fundamental disagreements, then of course you are required to choose the other candidate. by raising this objection you are validating the very notion of Top-Down voting which you claim to hate.

“i don’t think the abortion issue is important enough to be part of the baseline. to me it’s more negotiable, like taxes.” OK, good. that’s a genuine disagreement that you and i have. my only request is that you be slow to judge people who happen to believe that abortion is important enough. disagreeing with you that abortion is fundamentally important is not the same as being a Top-Down voter, nor is it necessarily an indication of cultishness, religious irrationality, or anything of that nature. it is simply a disagreement.

“the president doesn’t have any control over abortion. who cares what he thinks?” take a step back and think about this for a moment. what does the president really have control over, exactly? can he actually lower your taxes, by himself? can he single-handedly implement healthcare reform? can he change the laws about emissions? can he change any current laws at all? does he control the stock market? can he really save social security? i think the answer to these questions is pretty much the same: not really at all. and yet Obama and McCain just spent how many millions of dollars explaining to you their stances on all these issues? just because the president doesn’t have direct power over it doesn’t mean his (or, eventually, her) opinion isn’t important.

in fact, when you’re talking about the person that you’re electing to be in charge of this country, i think their opinions on all these issues are quite important. we all do. the question we’re dealing with today is how you prioritize those issues.

wrapping it up

sorry this is so long. it’s just that i feel genuinely trapped. on the one hand, i think the apparent “Christian right-winger” Top-Down voting is at worst irresponsible and at best ignorant. on the other hand, i can’t in good conscience vote for any candidate that doesn’t agree with me on what i believe to be very fundamental issues (including the issue of abortion). its not worth fulfilling a “civic duty” at the price of my conscience. [side note at josh: this was the actual point of derek webb's article.]

let’s all be a little more careful to judge the people we disagree with. please?

The question has made me think seriously about happiness and its role in my life.

Happiness is so very fleeting. Even if nothing bad happens, eventually I’ll get bored with just about anything that makes me happy. Even Disneyworld.

Happiness is also destroyed fairly easily. I’m happy now, but just wait ’til later today. Someone will ask me to do something at work that I don’t wanna do, or the dog will poop on the floor, or any number of other little things that happen regularly that threaten to upset my precariously balanced sense of happiness.

Not that happiness isn’t worth enjoying. It would be a waste to ignore or attempt to avoid the feeling in the moments where it quietly exists.

What I’m saying–I think–is that it’s not worth pursuing, contrary to our country’s mission statement. Happiness is icing on our proverbial cake. If it comes, so much the better. But there are more important things in life to spend time and energy chasing: things like faith, hope, love.

And the best of these is love.

The best part is I know an OSU Beaver personally.

I love underdogs.

1 — the people are fun. My boss is nice and likes to talk.
2 — free transportation. One of the benefits they provide is public transportation, which happens to be valid on weekends as well.
3 — being good at what I do. Not every job gives me that opportunity.
4 — beer Fridays! I mean, I don’t even really drink beer all that much and I know that’s a sweet perk.
5 — Dallas. This city is huge without being overwhelming. And there’s a food court underground. Underground, I tell you!

So that’s the deal. Shorter posts from now on. My fingers are tired.

This is the best news I’ve heard in a while. I actually called them myself, and apparently it worked. If you use Netflix, and there is more than one person in your house, you need to start using Profiles:

We Are Keeping Netflix Profiles

Dear Nic,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

there are no protagonists in css.

no backstory in html.

you can’t define a love interest in classes or ids.

any sometimes i just wish i could <span style=”display:none”></span>.

the internet hates me.

i’m still sick.

and now this.

then i was unsure. so here’s a last-ditch effort, and if it doesn’t work, i’m done.

sorry if i bothered anybody’s rss feeds…

Awesome Highlighter creates a copy of the
page, with the highlights included on it, and provides you with a link
that you can use to email, share on facebook, or twitter, or tumblr, or
your blog, or whatever you wanna do.

Nobody in this process has
to create an account or install an extension for Firefox or anything.
It’s the simplest kind of social: it works just like it would in real
life.

You should use it. Here’s a highlighted version of this very page on my blog that i made with the Awesome Highlighter:
http://awurl.com/povxlf98097

The population of the world is VERY large: 6,602,224,175.

In 1970, the average American home was 1,400 square feet.

…

If we gathered every single person into the state of Texas, every man, woman, and child would have 1134.2 square feet to themselves. Almost the floorspace of the average American home just 38 years ago.

But don’t forget, the world has an overpopulation problem.

[and also: where would we put Disneyworld?]

i hate graduations. i especially hate them now. because for me, all graduations remind me of is that feeling. the feeling you have of just accomplishing something truly great, coupled with a hope that the future holds something greater.

and while i know that the future DOES hold something greater, it’s little more than intellectual assent. "yes," says my brain, "heaven is a place to look forward to." but the rest of me just hates where i am right now.

which is INCREDIBLY STUPID, considering the fact that i’m surrounded by some of the most amazing people that i’ve ever met, and most of them happen to like me. i have a house, some fun animals, a job, security, and a loving wife.

and yet i still hate it. every day is a struggle to get to bedtime.

i don’t even know why i’m telling you this. back to regularly scheduled programming.

i feel like that was the most productive thing i did all day.

i think this might be my dark period.

on a related note: have you ever noticed that people that support a “woman’s right to choose” also tend to support things like animal rights and “save the earth” propaganda? we call that ironic.

short answer: i’m certainly not hating on them.

i think i use the "scare quotes" because the phrases people use to describe their positions are often more about politics and PR than actual substance. for instance, if a person is "pro-life", they probably care very little for the lives of, say, the near-extinct. in the same way, say a person supports a "woman’s right to choose", then they probably care very little for the choices of the female fetus.

the glossiness of such terms sickens me a little.

i would also argue that being a feminist does not necessitate support for a woman’s right to choose. i’d consider myself a feminist in every other regard (not counting the fact that i’m not a female).it’s a minor point, and a semantic one at that, but i thought it worth mentioning.

imagine for a moment that you believe animals have souls. would that change your eating habits?

it would mine.

but as it is, you probably don’t believe that they have souls, and you probably have no problem eating a juicy steak or chicken sandwich.

my point is that everything hinges on that original belief. on the subject of abortion, if i could convince myself that the newly fertilized were nothing more than a soulless blob of tissue, than the right to abortion is easier to stomach (there are still arguments against it, i realize, but that would certainly take a lot of wind out of the sails).

don’t get me wrong. i’m not switching sides. but i think it’s a good idea to look at it the other way every once in awhile.

on a related note: have you ever noticed that people that support a “woman’s right to choose” also tend to support things like animal rights and “save the earth” propaganda? we call that ironic.

but isn’t it also a little ironic that people who purport to recognize the value of every piece of God’s creation, no matter how recently conceived, also tend to have the least regard for animals and the rest of creation?