New Site

I’ve moved to a new site, on wordpress.com, and a slightly new theme. I realized at some point that I was blogging as much about computers and open source as about socialism, and the original “Mad Socialist” had recristened himself “Oh Shut Up” and found a spellchecker, so I thought I’d start fresh, with an open source host as well. I also think too many apologists have tried to eliminate socialism from the free software world, which strikes me as a bad idea, a devaluation of the true human potential of the movement.

Kucinich and Colbert

Dennis Kucinich appears on the Colbert Report (if this doesn’t work, try this)

Gonzales Resigns!

In the seemingly never-ending march toward the total resignation of the entire administration, Alberto Gonzales has resigned from his post as Attorney General. In my opinion, Mr. Gonzales had, like Rumsfeld before him, been a buffer between the public and the vice-president, a sort of whipping boy, who took the blame for what were clearly the vice-president or president’s bad decisions.

To me this seems like paving the way for Bush’s own resignation. Think about it: the replacements have never been the old cronies who would risk all for their President. They are politicians themselves, and won’t go down willingly for Bush.

It’s certainly a start.

A Departure

This may be a bit of a departure from my normal writing, but I think this song really does capture some of my philosophy.

For those of you who are wondering, yes, this song is from a Disney movie, Pocahontas, and it took me a few times hearing it to really take it for what it is, to appreciate what the lyrics are saying. So sit back, relax, put your prejudice behind you, and just listen to the words of wisdom.

Hope you enjoyed that!

I am often told, when arguing about religious beliefs, that without religion one cannot have moral justice. One cannot call Hitler immoral if one has no “objective” standards of morality. But Hitler, along with Pope Urban II, who authorized the crusades, and Osama bin Ladin, who was responsible for the deaths of 2,947 on September 11th, 2001, believed that he was doing the right thing, and the moral thing, and the thing which would lead him to paradise. In fact, all three of these men believed this because of a religious book which claimed objective moral teaching. There is nothing particularly malicious in the bible itself, of course, but rather in the fact that moral beliefs are dictated or taught, rather than carefully meditated on and chosen. I hope the following will be a decent response to both problems, that of defining morality within the confines of atheism, and that of creating a code of morality which may be truly objective because of its room for subjectivity.
There can be no gods. The existence of a god dilutes the perfect purity of the ideal religion, which is no religion at all but rather a pure moral code. If we choose to do something because of what our god’s interpreter (a religious leader) has told us, we must accept the possibility that this interpreter has mistook or lied about the most moral course. The basic element of morality is suffering and happiness. The solution to any moral dilemma is then, in theory at least, to think what the effects of each choice will be for those involved: which will cause the most happiness and the least suffering. Each human being must independently decide for him or herself what to weigh in the balance. For example, do humans count as much as other animals? Is a fly, with no nerves or brain to speak of, as important as a mammal which can feel real pain? Is a child or some other helpless person more important, on the grounds that, left to their own devices, they would not do the right thing for themselves? What about a human fetus? Or someone who is guilty of a heinous crime? There is no universal truth in any of this. Every human being must decide the answers for him or herself.
To me the answer to each of these questions is clear, and I use those answers in my everyday life to determine my opinion on the moral problems facing us today. For example, abortion, on which I hold the typical left-wing view. I challenge anyone who claims to be pro-life to answer this question: is the life of a living being with less brain cells than a fly, whose life as an unwanted child will almost certainly be painful, more important then the lifestyle of a young woman who has inadvertently become pregnant.
Through these decisions one can form a system of morality independent of dogma.

Idiosyncrasy

Why does adblock.com have popups?

Iceweasel: Update

Not very long ago, I said that everyone was talking about Iceweasel. Not so anymore. Remember my prediction? I said it didn’t matter at all, and now no one even remembers that there is such a thing. I currently use Firefox because it’s in the Ubuntu repos and I don’t really care so long as it’s open source.

New Feed

I have switched to the new Blogger Beta so if you subscribe to an RSS or Atom feed the URL has changed. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Foley+Bush

I found this on Quintin’s blog. A good play on the Clinton impeachment and the Foley scandal.

Linux in Developing Countries

Firstly, my apologies to anyone who might actually read this blog, as I haven’t posted in a while.

Anyway, I read in the New York Times today that Libya has signed a contract with One Laptop Per Child, which will provide Libya’s schools with a $100 laptop for each of Libya’s 1.2 million schoolchildren. As you might expect, these laptops will be running the best and least expensive OS in the world: Linux.

Actually, this represents a growing trend towards Open Source in developing nations. More on this (hopefully) later.