Mr. Steven Warshak appears to have all the hallmarks of a total slime ball.^[1] The fact that he certainly appears to deserve being locked up does not justify violating his civil rights though, and that is why the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are defending him. I feel for the guy, I really do. Nearly every email user out there has this mental picture of email as a replacement for paper letters that you get in the mail in envelopes. The sort that you have a legal and even realistic expectation of privacy, that no one except you and the recipient might possibly find and reveal the information in them.

Unfortunately this conception of email is utterly wrong. Worse, everyone who is actually understands how email works knows this. That our users do not is in some cases an example of willful ignorance and in others a failure on our parts. Most people using email never had any real explanation of it, only in a few cases has its relationship to postcards been explained and ignored.

For this reason, a good number of computer people use the PGP^[2] or GPG^[3] (equivalent, compatable systems created by different groups) to encrypt their email. A smaller group, not fully trusting that system, but wanting equivalent privacy, use Tiger Envelopes.^[4] Either of these provide reasonable levels of privacy, effectively enclosing your email in an envelope.

Without that, your email really is like a post card, and when stored on a server that is not your own, why should you expect that no one else would read it? You do not have that level of control or security when it comes to real post cards. People need to learn this. They could handle encryption, it really is not that hard, especially in the relatively non-authenticating forms (that is, forms of encryption that ensure that only you and the sender can read something, but do not tell you who the sender is).

Ignorance is no excuse. For reference, my public key is here.

On this 3rd day of Christmas, I somewhat belatedly wish all and sundry a very merry Christmas.

I have been filing bug reports against this for months now. Well, really only two bug reports so far, but that is because so little has changed in that time. If you think Gaim development is slow, you should see how closely the macports guys mimic the properties of cold molasses. This is very frustrating, and an ideal example of why linux continues to be my operating system of choice for my desktop. Now if only ssh forwarding across the vpn was a little faster…

7 Days.

If you want to argue that discrimination against women is alive and real, there is at least one area of life where I will most certainly agree: there is very real discrimination against prenatal girls.^[1] Unlike most other forms of discrimination, this version is invariably fatal. In some areas of the world, this form of discrimination is so severe that 150 boys are being born for every 100 girls. This will, as these children age, translate into only 2/3rds of the young men being able to find brides.

This phenomena is well documented in China, which is no doubt one of the areas where it has reached that 150/100 ratio. Less known though is the fact that it is a growing trend in India, and that it is starting to crept up in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and nearly every African state. In other words, we are increasingly seeing a world-wide tendency to kill female children. This will inevitably backlash against the overall population of the countries in question, but since our elites are concerned about the mythical idea of overpopulation anyway, this will no doubt be lauded.

What had not occurred to me earlier is the reality that this will no doubt lead to increased slavery (of women), and of more women being abducted and abused.

A high cost indeed for those advocating the idea that they have a freedom to chose to kill their baby.

Ms. Candice Watters of Boundless alerted^[1] me to an interview^[2] with Ms. Linda Hirshman, author, legal scholar and philosopher. Ms. Hirshman is a strong example of the problems of a secular feminist movement. This is perhaps more true because she is not a moral relativist. She attacks motherhood from a firm set of premises, allowing her, unlike your average moral relativist, to use logical arguments that many people are ill equipped to respond to. We, as a society, are not prepared for rational debate on meaningful topics, particularly not on our feet and without advance preparation. I intend to respond to segments of this interview, rather than giving the more cohesive and generalized response that Ms. Watters gives. All quotes come from one of the three pages of interview unless otherwise noted.

Are you angry or frustrated with women who stay home with their kids? I think they’re making a mistake. The most frustrating thing about the whole business is the nonsensical stories that they tell themselves and me about what they think they’re doing. The delusional quality of it is a little weird.

The Christian argument is certainly not nonsensical, it is simply not secular. Ms. Hirshman would have us evaluate the ethical status of a given choice in terms of three questions:

1. Does it fully use the capacities that make you human, specifically, the capacity for speech and reason?
2. Does it allow you to be free and independent and morally autonomous? Do you get to make decisions about your life yourself rather than having them dictated to you by others?
3. Does the life that you lead do more good than harm?

Looking at the first question, we see that the stay at home parent will need all of their wits to raise good, moral, hard working children in this society, with nearly everything going against them. Despite the need for speech as part of raising a child, the decision itself is a statement, something that will become more obvious as we progress with this response. Looking at the second question, we come to a fundamental disagreement with Ms. Hirshman’s ethical analysis. She rightly identifies that the person action on religious belief is co-operating with someone else’s will, namely God’s. She is wrong in equating this co-operation with being forced to do something. God does not force us, but rather gives us free will. While a religious society can provide something in the way of pressure to conform to its idea of God’s will, the same can be true of the secular society in reverse. The two forms of “peer pressure” cancel out in any comparative analysis, that is, looking at this societal pressure alone, neither society leaves its members more or less free in making their choice. Looking at her third question, we see what is perhaps our biggest disagreement. How do you measure “good”? Ms. Hirshman and I would have radically differing metrics.

However, we both have our metrics, and they metrics themselves are internally consistent. Our evaluation is not nonsensical, it is simply different than hers.

You seem to be saying that a woman who chooses to stay at home with her kids rather than working is harming all women in our society. Right. ߪ There’s a law against discriminating, but you can’t get into the head of every employer in America. These women are feeding into the stereotype of women as unreliable employees.

From this you can gather a couple of facts. One, Ms. Hirshman is not afraid to make the assertion that the stay at home mom is necessarily acting immorally. Secondly, you can see from this that there is and would be in Ms. Hirshman’s world, societal pressure reducing the autonomy of a choice to work.

They chose it and therefore, they argue, it’s all the same. And they’re so used to living in a religious world–the religious right was saying that it was correct for women to quit their jobs and stay home with their children. The right and the religious right never says that it’s the correct decision for men to quit their jobs and stay home with their children.

This is true. Christianity continues to teach the physical and psychological reality that men and women are different, and thus can be, and are in fact called to different roles in the family. Unlike Ms. Hirshman, though, Christians do not believe that the role of primary care giver for the family is a demeaning role, or in any way shape or form a lesser role.

I got 1,000 e-mails in the two days after an article about me appeared in the Washington Post. Some of the working mothers finally became aware of what was going on because they’re too busy working to be mommy blogging. They said, “Thank you so much for speaking out. I have felt so alone here. All we hear is the other message. Even if I don’t agree with everything you said, I’m so grateful to you for raising the issue.”

From this I gather that Ms. Hirshman is not alone in condemning those who choose not to work. This confirms stories I have heard elsewhere of such condemnation. This author is not a tolerant person. In her defense, she does not claim to be one.

[Conservative activist] Phillis Schlafly said that they hated men and didn’t want to get married or have children.

I am sorry to have to inform you that Ms. Schlafly is not the origin of such comments. Liberal feminists are. To accuse Ms. Schlafly and other conservatives of deception on this point is ludicrous.

And my second rule is take work seriously. One of the things that I found was that the stay-at-home moms [who had elite professional training] believe that there is no job in the world that is good enough for them. So, in deciding that the law firm wasn’t good enough for them, they have retreated to a job that certainly isn’t good enough for them.

Yes, they have evaluated the workspace in light of different principles, principles that you reject but have not refuted, and found the role of Mother to be the most important, rewarding, and compelling. You disagree, so you assert that they must be wrong. That is not substantially different from what I do when I reason to an absolute right or wrong from my Catholic faith. The difference is that my philosophy created Western Civilization, while hers created the post-modern disaster of a society that we live in, in which Europe is failing to maintain replacement level birth rates. Fr. Pollard rightly says that the test of philosophy is the ability to live by it. Secularism is a path to societal suicide.

Right, it’s just hilarious to listen to these women describe their investment-banking jobs as not good enough for them, and then to have them tell me what they’re actually doing with their days.

If you consider raising your children unimportant, best relegated to the uneducated, or those otherwise unsuited for business, and not deserving and requiring the best efforts we can dedicate to the task, then yes, I am sure that it is hilarious.

What is going on there is that she’s walked away from any hope of a meaningful career, and she doesn’t want to face it.

<sarcasm>You see, there is just no way for motherhood to be a meaningful vocation.</sarcasm>

I got a flood of really rabid e-mail–very personal, very harsh. And unlike the usual e-mails, they also were notable for their bad grammar and spelling. So I couldn’t figure where this flood of e-mails was coming from, and then someone sent me a speech by Albert Mohler, the head of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He said, “This woman is the instrumentality of the devil.” He lied about what I said, and then he told everybody that I was the end of civilization as we know it. That was my first clue that the forces of organized religion in America were going to be aiming at me.

It is deplorable that such a claim is not laughable. It undermines all our efforts when people misrepresent the arguments that we are debating. I am not saying that Mr. Mohler did so, I have not read his speech myself, and I do not trust Ms. Hirshman. She was, as you saw, perfectly capable of deception about the nature of feminism afterall. Still, even Mr. Mohler’s accuracy aside, that people would respond in such a way is equally deplorable. This is true not just in debates involving religion, we see the same thing in the Open Source movement whenever Slashdot publishes a story that causes its readers to react against a person or company. It is, however, less tolerable when coming from Christians, as we are called to better behavior and higher standards.

Contraception has often been linked to eugenics and population control. It is rare that we get to see the truth of that, as reflected in today’s news.^[1] The telling point is after the article stops talking about the necessity of population control (which is debatable), and starts bemoaning the focus on abstinence before and faithfulness in marriage, and urges a greater availability of condoms.

But the real question is why, if Nationalized Health care is so good, so determined and obligated to provide for the health of all citizens, was this^[1] ever in doubt?

A month ago or so, I wrote about a lengthy paper published in an unscholarly forum that challenged any number of aspects of global warming.^{[1] [2]} A few days later, I was informed that a rival, and equally unscholarly, forum challenged the assertions published in the first.^[3] While I found the refutation to be a less cogent argument, it is certainly possible that others were persuaded to dismiss Mr. Monckton’s claims.

Today’s news should be less dismissable. Professor David Derning, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis, has testified before congress to some of the flaws in the public understanding of global warming.^[4] Specifically, he affirms Mr. Monckton’s claim that scientists are actively trying to deceive us about the “Medieval Warm Period,” and about the media’s complicity. He provides at least some evidence of significant bias, with the media unwilling to print a story related to the topic unless humans can be shown to be a cause.

The Medieval Warm Period, if it is allowed to have existed, would make the modern temperature rise significantly less unique. In doing so, it would substantially undermine the idea that this warming is necessarily caused by human activity. We would have to consider the possibility that the current warming is caused by the same or similar phenomena as that one.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops decided last month in their fall meeting that it is time for the hymns sung in mass to be doctrinally correct.^[1] This means that some of the excesses in the use of “inclusive” language should be curbed, and updating archaic language might be done more carefully. While it is certainly true that some use of inclusive language is possible without introducing heretical statements, the idea advanced by Boston College professor Lisa Sowle Cahill that “nothing radical” has been done to the songs used at mass since 1950 is certainly inaccurate. I have seen a few examples of abuses as I go through the song hymnal before each mass even here in the “conservative” Arlington Diocese.