Ever Get the Feeling that You're Being Watched?

Is This the Line for the Apple Store?

I don't normally recommend the webcomic Least I Could Do, but when I do, it's freaking hilarious.

The "Occupy Wall Street" protests bring three things to my mind:

1. Why should I care if my neighbor makes a million times more money than I do? Anytime I see some statistic like "the discrepancy between rich and poor is the greatest it's ever been in history" or "the wealthiest 400 Americans have as much money as the poorest 150 million," my reaction is "so?" This is nothing more than a red herring. If the poor have the necessities they need to survive, then it doesn't matter how much money the rich have. If the poor don't have the necessities they need to survive, then it doesn't matter how much money the rich have.
2. The anger and rage seems to be aimed at "bankers" and "Wall Street". If the protesters could name names and deeds of people who have committed crimes, they may have a point. But to blame "Wall Street" or "bankers" seems to blame a class, rather than a person. You might as well just blame the Jews.
3. "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, his male or female slave, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." (Ex. 20:17)

Also, this was interesting, for those who haven't seen it:

Chesterton Quote of the Day/Week/Month

For you mothers.


Supposing it to be conceded that humanity has acted at least not unnaturally in dividing itself into two halves, respectively typifying the ideals of special talent and of general sanity (since they are genuinely difficult to combine completely in one mind), it is not difficult to see why the line of cleavage has followed the line of sex, or why the female became the emblem of the universal and the male of the special and superior. Two gigantic facts of nature fixed it thus: first, that the woman who frequently fulfilled her functions literally could not be specially prominent in experiment and adventure; and second, that the same natural operation surrounded her with very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.


--G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with he World, Part 3 "Feminism, or the Mistake about Woman", III "The Emancipation of Domesticity".

Some Much Needed Perspective

Ok, let's get something straight. I've seen a risible idea circulating lately and I cannot let it stand, so I have come to set the record straight.

You ready?

Steve Jobs Did Not Change The World.

Blasphemy! I hear you say.

But get over it. He did no such thing.

To prove my point, here's a list of 11 things that Changed the World:

1. Christianity
2. Islam
3. The Roman Empire
4. Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy
5. The scientific world view (that material causes can explain empirical observations without invoking supernatural causes, not that everything can be explained scientifically, I mean).
6. The Protestant Revolt
7. The Enlightenment
8. The steam engine
9. The industrial revolution
10. The automobile
11. Electrification

Here are 5 things that have not changed the world, but have made life slightly more convenient for those living in the first world:

1. The graphical user interface
2. The portable MP3 player
3. The online music store
4. The smartphone
5. The tablet PC

The personal computer probably has changed the world (although since it's less than 50 years old, it's hard to say how much those changes will matter in 1000 years), but Steve Jobs did not invent it. Speaking of which, here is a list of 5 things Steve Jobs did not invent:

1. The graphical user interface
2. The portable MP3 player
3. The online music store
4. The smartphone
5. The tablet PC

Nope. Nuh-uh. Not a one. What he did is best summarized in this Basic Instructions: Steve Jobs is the kid who copies off your test, then gets a better grade than you.

What Steve Jobs did is shape the development of one world-changing device, and several minor conveniences. All would have developed without him. They might not have developed in the same way. Some ideas may not have been implemented, or taken longer to refine. Maybe the wouldn't have caught on and been as widespread, But they'd still all be there. 

If Steve Jobs never existed, you would still own a personal computer. You'd still be reading my writing on your color rasterizationator through the intertubes. E-Commerce would still exist. You could still listen to music you purchased online on your portable MP3 player. You could check email on your phone. You might do it all differently; you might not do any of it at all, but you still could do it all.

Contrast this with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. As Mike Flynn points out, without them, there may never have been a scientific revolution. Universities may not have put such an emphasis on natural philosophy. Middle Ages and Renaissance scientists may never have said "what if" and asked how the world worked. Copernicus, Brahe, and Kepler may never have seen a need to update Ptolemy (it worked; why fix it?). No science, no industrial revolution, no modern life. To be sure, those things may have come, but it may have been centuries later. We might be living in the technological equivalent of the 17^th century.

Introducing a fundamental change to the way people view the world, whose echoes still shape thought 2000 years later. That's changing the world. Not making a device that allows rich people to listen to music on the go.

Photodump

Totally Looks Like

Anthony totally looks like Perry the Platypus.

Damien totally looks like Anthony

Therefore, Damien totally looks like Perry the Platypus

Come to think of it, why has no one ever been able to take a picture of both Damien and Anthony at the same time?

There we go.

On the Occasion of the Resident Toddler's Second Birthday.

This is inaccurate. Two weeks later, the pediatrician measured him at 37".

According to the Baby Center Height Predictor, this puts him within 2.1" of 6'4" at age eighteen, with 90% confidence.

Chief Engineer Smiles O'Brien, Reporting for Duty.

Polite Babbies Always Drink their Milk with Pinky Fingers Extended.

All I Ask Is a Carrot to Ride and a Cake Wreck to Steer Her By.

A reference to the infamous "Carrot Jockey" cake wreck.

Catholicism on Public Television

Father Robert Barron's Catholicism will be airing on PBS stations nationwide, as well as on EWTN. You will want to catch this one. It's inspired by Kenneth Clark's Civilisation and looks to be amazing. You can find out more (and watch clips from it) here.

You can also find out air dates for your area here.

For those of us in LA/Orange Counties, episodes 1, 3, 4, and 5 will be on KLCS (channel 58) Mondays at 9pm, starting October 3rd. KVCR (channel 24) will air it Tuesdays at 8pm, starting on the 11th. Those in Lake Elsinore, I assume, can get KVCR (Riverside/San Bernardino).

If those in Bakersfield can get Fresno stations, KVPT will air all four PBS episodes on October 23rd starting at 11am.

In the Tampa area, you can catch it on WEDU on Wednesdays at 11pm, starting October 5th.

In Chicago (Fr. Barron's home diocese), it will be on WTTW Thursdays at 8pm starting October 13th, with encores the following Sundays at 4pm.

In South Bend (I think I have readers there?) it will be on WNIT Thursdays, October 13th and 20th, from 9-11pm.

If those in the DC area weren't so busy trying to raise well-adjusted children, and still had access to on-air television, they could have watched the first episode on Maryland PTV this past Thursday at 8pm, and the second this coming Thursday, the 29th, at the same time.

If I missed anyone, check here for your market.

The remaining episodes (2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) will air on EWTN on November 16th-19th, repeatedly.

And if you can't catch it on TV, potentially because you're lame or because you live in a stone-age commune and don't have TV, you can buy the DVD box set for a kingly sum of $150 (I know what's going on my Birthday/Christmas list this year!). Or you can wait for your parish to host a showing, unless you go to some hippie new-age parish.

There's also a book to go along with it. Again, you will not want to miss this.

How to Make a Kia Commercial

(With apologies to Shamus Young)