It appears that someone else shares my theory that many (most?) “adults” never really grew up.¹ As she says, it is not all that hard to find examples of people with what should be a surprising lack of maturity.

You’re Mississippi!
Torn and conflicted, sometimes people feel you have a split personality. People have a hard time knowing whether you’re coming or going, black or white, racist or egalitarian. While you say you’re a combination of everything, many look at you and think you’re just trying to be divisive, even offensive. It seems like your image problem would be easy to correct, but you have almost no money for other changes or improvements. When people are trying to slow themselves down, they say your name.
Take the State Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

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More accurately, polygyny is already there, the question is whether or not it will become officially legal.¹ I am disgusted almost beyond words. The one comment worthy aspect of the article is the trenchant observation that freedom of religion would have to give way if this were a question of homosexual rights or marriage, but is held up as absolute when it comes to polygynous marriage. It is almost beyond belief. How can a people that celebrates the value of women allow this‽

According to coupons.com it does.¹ Mr. John Stottlemire figured out that deleting some files and registry keys off of his computer would allow him to print unlimited coupons from coupons.com, and posted instructions on how to duplicate the effect, and a program to do so automatically for those unable to follow the instructions.

He had to expect that he would be sued, the idea that they would see this as a reason to give him a job is ludicrous. That being said, I agree with Mr. Kravets that the idea that the DMCA considers this hacking a program to circumvent copy protection is worrisome. I should have the right to delete anything on my computer without fear of suit.

I somehow managed to get poison ivy across my left check and nose. I think I picked it up on the meandering walk home from St. Veronica’s that Lauren and I took Tuesday night. If not then, it must be in Mom’s garden somewheres.

It is only very mildly itchy, but it is managing to significantly annoy me anyway. I put some cortisone cream stuff on at Lauren’s a few hours ago, but it only really helped for a few minutes. Not worth it.

grumbles

As an example of what I am trying to get at in a previous post, it was not at all healthy when the “Italian” mass was pushed into the basement by then dominant Irish Catholics (and this in a pre-Vactican II atmosphere, where the Mass was in Latin!). Nor was the answer then for the Italian Catholics to alone change, to give up being Italian to become more Irish. That would be over simplifying for one thing, but in an equally real sense, it is just wrong. The Irish-Americans needed to change also, an uncomfortable process then, just as it is now. And so while I dislike change as much (if not far more than) the next person, I realize that our culture is and must be in flux. Hopefully it will improve, I fear it all to possible it could further degenerate.

While my family was still at St. Joseph’s, the pastor was at one point heard to infer (if not outright state, my memory is that he said) that there are no poor people in the parish. He was denying the need for a traditional St. Joseph’s festival of the kind not seen in this area in longer than I can remember, where the food collected would be used to help out needy families in the parish. That sort of attitude was ignoring a substantial population right there in Herndon. They were not (and are not) noticed in the parish by and large, and that is not right. While St. Josephs is a “non-Hispanic” parish, that problem probably will not be addressed. But the better alternative would not be to have some sort of outreach to the “Hispanic community,” but to have a single Herndon community that includes the Hispanic population (and the other groups that I am not mentioning for simplicity). The latter is far harder to obtain. I am not enough of a people person to know how to realistically approach that goal.

I went to Mass last night for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Vigil. I do not think I have attended on the vigil for this holy day before, because I was surprised to see the Gospel reading, not because it does not fit — it does, but because it fits so very well.¹

While Jesus was speaking, a woman from the crowd called out and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” He replied, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”²

A Protestant might see this and think “See, Mary is not so special.” Such a Protestant would have missed something crucial. Here, Jesus is pointing out that what makes Mary so special is not the simple fact that she is his mother, but the unique and absolute nature of her “Yes” to God. For who besides Christ Himself has heard the word of God and observed it with the fidelity that Mary has?

It appears that not all Y2k bugs have been fixed; one was found in NASA’s handling of raw climate data.¹ After the corrected figures² have been released, it turns out that 1934, and not 1998, is the warmest year on record. Why a Y2k bug would have changed the readings for 1998 I am unsure. It is very puzzling, but the new data linked to does in fact seem to state that. Still, I wonder if the author is not misinterpreting something (though I would of course love to be able to state that our warmest years were so far back).

UPDATE: 2007-08-17: As I watch the confused reporting on this, I see very little worth linking to. Still, it seems to be that this was not a Y2k bug, though the fact that there was a bug of some sort, and that it has been corrected, is not challenged. Many are also being very quick to challenge the idea that the ranking of various years matters at all.

If Mr. Pat Buchanan is summarizing the work of Dr. Robert Putnam accurately, then we have a valuable clue to how our cultural “melting pot” has worked in the past.¹ According to this summary, the major effects of massive immigration are mostly negative, more mistrust, less civic virtue, less hope and less trust. How then can we say that immigration has benefited us? How, from this morass of distrust did we (re)develop a unified American culture?

The answer, according to this summary, is that the wave of massive immigration was followed by a long period of very low immigration. It is over this period that the diversity settled out, melted and flowed together. The action then is much like a crock pot, which takes hours to cook something.

From this example, I can infer how previous waves of immigration must have worked. For while we have had significant bursts of this population or that population, bursts from Ireland, from Italy, from Norway, from Germany, or Poland, they did not all come at once. They grew, they peaked, they fell off. And so you see a growth of distrust against a group, followed by a period of simmering, melting together, as the two groups face some third group.

Immigrants are an important part of this country. I do not know that we need to cut back on it, nor am I confident that doing so would be good for this country. We must assimilate them though. We must forge bonds of unity with them, and this process will not work by accentuating our differences, celebrating them as a people distinct from ourselves. We cannot preserve their culture and ours, we must merge the two. There must be give and take.

This will not be easy. My fear though is that it will not even be possible, because they will not give, and will be encouraged in that intransigence by our own elite.

Note that I have not mentioned race once in this thought processes until now. I do not think it belongs, because I believe that there is much that separates the protestant from the Catholic, the German from the Pollack, the Italian from the Irish. I do not buy the idea that there is this “anglo-saxon” majority that is all the same inherently. If we are (IF!!), then it is because we have experienced a melting pot effect that other cultures present here in the United States have experienced less fully, if at all.