Just found a great new iPhone App web site via LifeHacker. AppShopper does something I have wanted for some time: shows me apps sorted the way I want them. The App Store from Apple is severely limited in the way it allows you to search for apps. You can search by name or keyword, by category, and a few other ways, but if you want to concentrate on free apps only, then your choices are limited–all you’ve got is the “top” apps list. Otherwise, you have to sort through long lists mostly populated by paid apps.

App Shopper let’s you look for paid, free, or all apps, limiting the search by category, new or old, and shows updates & price changes. A very handy way to find exactly what you’re looking for. Now you can be presented with a list of free productivity apps, for example, without having to also track what’s free and what’s not. And it’s a good way to see daily what new free apps have been released.

When you find something you might be interested in, you can see the whole description with screen shots right there on the web page, without having to go to iTunes. But when you’re ready to download it, there’s a link which will open the app’s page directly in iTunes for an easy download.

This just made my “visit daily” list.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Mom & Dad!

If you have any kind of portable media player but don’t yet have Handbrake, now would be a good time. Handbrake, with a strange name and an even stranger icon, is a very handy video encoding app. It was originally designed for taking DVDs and creating standalone video files on your computer–a DVD ripping app. However, a recent upgrade made it able to grab any video file it could recognize.

A video DVD is made up of a variety of strange-looking files, with video and audio often separated in different folders; you can’t just drag and drop onto your desktop, even without copy-protection measures getting in the way. Handbrake assembles all those files and saves them as a single video file for easy viewing. However, it does more than that–it re-encodesd and compresses. Re-encoding means that it will change the video from an MPEG-2 file, the (very space-consuming) kind used on DVDs, to an AVI, MP4, MKV, or OGM file. AVI files are the most common type used for digital cameras or Internet downloads; MP4s are good for iTunes, and therefore iPods and iPhones. But more important is the compression: video DVDs are often 4 to 8 GB in size; Handbrake can scale that down to whatever size you want, though quality is lost when you get too small. A 90-minute movie can be compressed down to CD-size, however, with surprisingly good quality.

Using it is simple. Insert a DVD (or prepare any video file) and then open Handbrake. You’ll be prompted with a dialog asking you to locate the source. When you do, you’ll get a readout of information on the original source:

At the top, you’ll see the “Title,” which lists the various videos within the source. For example, if your DVD has not just the movie, but extra features (such as ‘making-of’ videos, deleted scenes, outtakes, etc.) as well, each will be counted in this list. Select one video, and if there are chapters, they’ll be listed to the right, and you can choose to encode all or only a range of chapters. If the source file is a single video file, then there are no choices, just the one video.

Under “Output Settings,” you can choose what file type–AVI or MP4, for example. And then under that is all the technical stuff–though under “Video,” on the right, is the place where you can determine the eventual quality/file size of the output video (that’s the compression I mentioned above).

On the right side is a handy drawer with a lot of pre-sets:

Just click on one of them and it will optimize the settings to spit out a file that can best be used on any of the devices or programs listed.

The new feature of using any video file (instead of just DVDs) as a source is great for iPod/iPhone users. It means that you can take any existing video file and re-encode it so it plays on your handheld device.

The main drawback: it takes time to re-encode. This depends a lot on your computer and how it handles graphics-related tasks. On an old computer, it could take all night to re-encode a file. If you have a fairly new medium-to-fast consumer machine, then it might take as long to encode as it takes to watch it–so, count on two hours for a two-hour movie.

Handbrake is cross-platform, so it’s good for Mac, Windows, or Linux. You can download it here.

When Sachi and I were at Shinjuku Gyouen, I spotted a few birds that made it worth the ¥400 for us both to enter. One was a bird I’d seen quickly in passing before, another was an entirely new species–rare enough for me nowadays. The one I’d seen in passing was the Rose-ringed Parakeet, a largish parrot-like bird, and an invasive species (escaped pet) to Tokyo. Though they can be spotted all over Tokyo, hundreds flock near a biological institute in Setagaya. It seems, however, that they like the east side of Shinjuku Gyouen–where I spotted them both times.

Pretty birds. Lovely plumage.

I could not identify this next bird on spotting, but it turns out that it’s a Brambling, or アトリ (Atori) in Japanese. The distinctive white markings on the wings and back made it pretty clear what it was.

Actually, it was the red breast that first gave it away–not too many birds have that.

To show how hard birding can be at times, here’s the same bird from two other angles. Compare with the previous photos–they don’t look very much alike.

This last bird remains a mystery–I have to get this one ID’ed at the bird forum or something.

You may remember the case of Julie Amero, the poor substitute teacher who was the victim of an incompetent IT department at her school, and even more incompetent school administrators and county prosecutors who very wrongly vilified her.

Short version of the story: her school’s IT department allowed a school computer to become infested with adware which caused porn sites to pop up on the machine. A full-time teacher logged Amero onto the machine and left, and when the porn pop-ups came, Amero did her best to stop them and keep students away from it. For her efforts, she was rewarded by the school firing her and then having the police arrest her. The school’s IT people and supposed security “experts” testified that Amero must have caused the porn to come up. However, even after real computer experts pointed out, in large numbers, that Amero was completely innocent, the school and prosecutors, in full cover-your-ass mode, kept up their prosecution, and the case–four years old now–finally ended with Amero accepting a plea deal.

She agreed to accept a misdemeanor charge or disorderly conduct, paid a $100 fine, and surrendered her teaching license. Plus, Amero has been hospitalized for health issues caused by the stress of this situation.

I know that the poor woman simply wants to put this horrendous episode behind her, but if I were her, I would hit back against these people with a whopping ginormous lawsuit. Amero was innocent, and the school and the prosecutors were extraordinarily, exceedingly, massively guilty of incompetence, wrongful prosecution, and ruining the poor woman’s life. They should not just be sued, they should be jailed as well.

The liberal bloggers are buzzing about a rather sensationalist claim being made by TIME Magazine’s Mark Halperin about the election:

“It’s the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war. It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage.”

When asked for examples of this bias, he pointed to two pieces on the wives of the candidates, citing one piece blasting Cindy McCain and another piece admiring Michelle Obama. (Just a note as a writer–if you make a charge, best to back it up with direct evidence–stories about wives is about as weak as you can get in this case.) When asked why the media was so biased, he replied that they wanted to see Obama simultaneously “etched in glass” and “on Mount Rushmore.” Uh huh.

Now, E&P did a pretty good job pointing out multiple pieces of direct evidence that Halperin has been pretty right-wing this election, and normally I would simply let this kind of thing pass. But that’s what I thought about the whole “center-right” thing, and yet it seems that the media–er, the “Liberal Media™”–is picking up the meme and running with it. It’s certainly a natural theme for right-wingers to try to inflate for the next four to eight years; it has worked very well for them for the past fifteen or so years, they might as well pump it up even more, now that the Democrats will be in charge.

The basic idea, of course, is to “work the refs.” If you complain that the media is too leftist, this benefits you in at least two ways. First, the media, wishing to avoid the appearance of favoring the left, will create false equivalencies–in effect, creating positive news for the right if the news is good for the left, or negative news for the left if the news for the right is bad. They do not do this in reverse, as they do not fear being labeled a ‘conservative media.’ As a result, in general, media coverage favors the right, even with news organizations that are not overtly right-wing.

The second benefit is to create the impression among the public that whatever they see in the media is tilted to the left. Combined with the first benefit, this creates an enhanced effect: the public gets news that leans to the right, but believes that it leans too far to the left, and so has the impression that the truth is even farther to the right.

But what about the basic charge? Is it possible, in fact, that Obama got better coverage? Halperin is not alone; Deborah Howell wrote such a story in the WaPo a few weeks back claiming bias in favor of Obama; the right-wing blogs jumped all over that one. E&P again, however, competently debunks the claims Howell made.

One basis for the general claims of a tilt toward Obama is the fact that there were more headlines about Obama than there were about McCain. A few problems there. First, many of these tallies start long before Obama’s protracted fight with Hillary Clinton ended, so of course there was more coverage of Obama. Second, more news is not necessarily good news: a lot of those stories about Obama were on topics like Jeremiah Wright or William Ayers; the press did not similarly focus as much on McCain’s negative associations. In fact, studies found that the media ran more negative stories about Obama in terms of percentages–which means that more coverage about Obama meant even more media coverage showing him in a bad light. Finally, there was the source of the focus itself. A study found that while the most common word used on Obama’s web site was “Obama,” it also found that the most common word used on McCain’s site was… “Obama.” The media covered Obama more in part because McCain directed them to; while Obama was focusing more on the issues, McCain was focusing far more on Obama. You can’t call the media biased for Obama if they are following McCain’s lead and focusing more on Obama’s negatives.

Then we get to the fact that there was a lot more negative material about McCain out there than there was about Obama–and yet the media covered most of Obama’s and very little of McCain’s. A few examples: first, campaign financing. Early in the year, McCain clearly violated campaign finance law by using public financing as collateral on a loan, using the loaned money, then claiming they were no longer participating in public financing, exceeding legal limits on spending. Even the Republican FEC chief balked at that–and was rewarded with a pink slip, as a more pliant FEC head was appointed by Bush before the FEC could take any action. This was one of the big under-reported stories of the year: a candidate who touted himself as a campaign finance champion committing a federal felony with campaign finance evasions. And there was virtually zero coverage in the news. In contrast, when Obama, who had promised only to discuss public financing, decided to take the wholly legal route of private financing, there was an avalanche of bad press about him for a while.

Another example was religious connections. While Obama’s relation to Jeremiah Wright was front-and-center for months, McCain’s association with right-wing religious figures, people he pursued for their endorsements, were not covered except briefly when they made similarly outrageous comments. There was even video of Sarah Palin herself being blessed by a priest who talked of witchcraft, and had persecuted innocent women in Africa as witches. That got almost no coverage as well.

Yet another example is flip-flops; McCain had significantly altered or even reversed his stands on almost every single issue of importance, and yet not only did the media ignore this, it often claimed that he did not flip-flop on the issues. Even though McCain changed from “more drilling won’t help” to “drilling is absolutely vital” within just a few months, with video to mark both the flip and the flop–the media virtually ignored it. Contrast that with Obama reiterating his Iraq policy–with no changes or reversals–leading to a week of media coverage on how he was flip-flopping.

And one more example was McCain’s being neck-deep in lobbyists. Whenever some big story broke, it had links to lobbyists on McCain’s campaign staff, usually people high up. When the whole Georgia crisis erupted, it was learned that McCain’s foreign policy advisor was still being paid to lobby for Georgia. When the Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae scandal broke, it was learned that McCain’s campaign manager was still receiving lobbyist paychecks from both firms. And yet somehow, the media never picked up on this story–they instead created false equivalencies, saying that “both” campaigns had lobbyist ties, as if that meant both were equally corrupt.

So the media was often absent when McCain had bad news surrounding him, but almost never passed up a chance to report on bad news about Obama. In fact, there was that one time when CNN had video of McCain making a rather notable gaffe–and they re-edited the video to cover up the gaffe. They later claimed it was a “mistake,” as if it were accidental–I mean, what, did they trip over something?

Similarly, the media took very seriously the idea that one could not criticize McCain on a variety of issues because he was a veteran and a former POW. Bob Schieffer, on more than one occasion, became visibly angry when people suggested that McCain might not be presidential material; Tom Brokaw had similar man-crush moments regarding McCain.

Then there is the fact that all too often, there simply was no equivalent news to be covered. Take the day when Obama was delivering a stirring speech to 200,000 Germans in Europe, while McCain was giving a lame photo op outside the “Fudge Haus.” The media cannot be blamed for covering grand events as grand events and lame ones as lame ones. If Obama drew crowds of tens of thousands and McCain couldn’t fill a medium-sized room, if Obama gave brilliant oratory and McCain laughed with hideous awkwardness in front of an appalling green screen… there is no media bias if they simply cover what happened.

And finally, there were McCain’s atrocious decisions and performance. It was bad enough early on, but Sarah Palin was the turning point. Choosing someone who was so clearly unqualified and even disastrously unprepared after having gone on for months about Obama not being “experienced” enough, choosing such a blatantly political running mate who only jeopardized the nation’s future leadership while running under a “country first” banner, going before reporters and claiming himself that living near the outer reaches of Russia’s tundra really did qualify Palin in terms of foreign affairs and national security… these were not just gaffes, these were intended actions which demonstrated catastrophically bad judgment.

Add to that the fact that McCain refused to allow media access to Palin, held back medical records and other documents considered necessary for public review, and kept pulling badly managed and even bizarre publicity stunts, and you begin to realize that, if anything, the media’s coverage of McCain in the final month of the election was actually far better than McCain deserved from an objective standpoint.

Not only was there not a media bias for Obama, there was a demonstrable and sharply noticeable media bias in favor of McCain. And if you hear anyone say differently, shut them down. There’s a wealth of examples, only a few of which I have outlined above, to prove the case beyond any doubt. Let’s not let this meme go unchallenged.

Here we go again: another spate of news stories about new Mac “viruses” with prognostications of an oncoming wave of Mac malware, where the real threat is far from what is suggested.

The Telegraph got snookered on the story, where its headline “Apple Mac computers targeted by virus” was subtitled with, “Security experts claim that two new viruses targeting Apple’s OS X operating system have been identified in the last week.” For the Nth time: the report concerns trojans, not viruses. To this day, there have been zero–count them: zero–viruses or worms for the Mac. This is significant because, as I have pointed out before, no OS can protect against trojans. Trojans prey on users being foolish enough to execute them, using promises of free goodies to trick them. The Mac OS is no more immune from trojans than is Windows or Linux. In fact, I am somewhat surprised that there have not been a much larger number of trojans for the Mac than the 4 or 5 that I have ever heard of (including the current ones); there is no reason why there should not be thousands, and the fewer number of Macs out there would not seem to explain the very limited number of trojans out there for the platform.

An article for Computer World was only slightly more accurate: “Mac OS X: Vulnerable to new Trojans.” It is more accurate only in that it used the term “trojans” instead of viruses, but even in that, the article is highly misleading at the very least. For one thing, only one item was a trojan, the other was software that enabled trojans. Next, the article headline using the plural “trojans,” while technically semi-accurate, gives the impression that there are more than two pieces of malware. Third, to say that the Mac is “vulnerable” to these is questionable. In one case, we have a standard trojan, which, as I explained earlier, is equally a threat to all computers. Calling the Mac “vulnerable” to this is like pointing out that Spanish people specifically are “vulnerable” to being killed if they fall off a ten-story building onto concrete. In the other case, the Mac is only “vulnerable” if a hacker gets physical access to a Mac and knows the password; this is not “vulnerable” in the common sense.

And that leads me to the bottom line: neither of these trojans is likely to infect many Macs at all. One of them, as I said, requires direct access to the computer, making it all but useless as malware. The other one is a trojan which lures users to install it by offering it as a “free codec” to watch online porn. This makes it the second trojan to do this–and those two trojans stand, at this point in time, as the only malware that stand to have any real-world impact. All the rest are either harmless proof-of-concept works or require direct access.

Edit: Actually, the facts are even more revealing when you realize that the “second” porn-codec trojan is nothing more than the first one recoded a bit. In short, there is actually only one trojan for the Mac in the wild–this “new” one, being used as evidence for “growing numbers of Mac malware,” is just a new version of the sole existing trojan.

Which means that, to this day, in order to be “vulnerable” to any malware on a Mac, you have to be a porn viewer who believes that downloading a special Mac codec from a porn site is a spiffy idea. Or you have to hand your Mac over to a hacker and tell them your password. And if anyone is infected, these are trojans, not viruses or worms, which means that the damage is limited to that one computer only. So far, despite the first porn-related trojan being ‘in the wild’ for some time, I have not heard of any Macs being found infected with it–though admittedly, that may be because the users would be too embarrassed to admit it, as it would mean they would have to admit to being (a) porn viewers, and (b) stupid enough to fall for it. Still, if a large number of Mac users had fallen prey to it, I would think that word would have gotten out about it by now.

The real tell in these articles is that the warnings come from “security experts” who work for “security vendors.” In other words, companies which want to sell you antivirus software you don’t need, so they issue alarmist press releases which news outlets and naive tech bloggers regularly fall for, trying to scare you into thinking you need security software for your Mac.

So I reiterate what is now a familiar litany: although Macs are not “invulnerable” to malware (that myth is not propagated by Mac users, but by Mac naysayers who exaggerate what Mac users say), there is at this time no self-propagating malware for the Mac, only a pair of porn trojans a single porn trojan that requires your permission to attack your computer. Unless you ever download software from porn sites, you have no need for security software at this time. Which is not to say you never will; eventually, there will be viruses and/or worms for the Mac, there just haven’t been any yet. There have not been any real threats so far because (a) the Mac OS does have better security in general than does Windows, and (b) the Mac user base is small enough to attract less attention from the hackers. When malware which poses an actual threat does come out, it will likely be spotty enough that freeware protection will quickly be available–if not a direct fix by Apple itself via software update.

We are probably a long ways away from Mac malware being serious and common enough to warrant the purchase of commercial security software.

Update: Just to punctuate the above, Microsoft itself–not just the antivirus vendors–has highlighted yet another “critical” worm which can attack Windows computers running XP, Vista, and even Windows 7, the OS that MS won’t even release for a few years yet. Not just a “vulnerability,” not just a trojan, but full-blown worm with a strong presence in the real world.

Sachi and I went to Jingu Gaien Sunday for the Ichou Festival. Literally, “Ichou” is “Ginkgo Tree,” as in “Ginkgo Biloba,” the widely-known herbal supplement. The southern avenue of Jingu Gaien is lined with Ginkgo trees, which are also known as “Maidenhairs,” though they resemble most the hairstyle worn by Alice in the Dilbert comic.

One of the down points is that the Ginkgo nut, as Sachi pointed out to me, smells kinda like dung. The main drag was OK, but some areas nearby were pretty smelly.

We also miscalculated in thinking that we were going to a park, as “Gaien” means “outer garden.” Jingu Gaien, however, is more of a sports complex (built for the 1964 Olympics, in fact); although there were a few small actual parks here and there, it was mostly stadiums and sports fields. Still, the main drag was nice, with the tree lining and all.

There was one field given over to the usual food stalls (a surprising number selling foreign food, not your usual Japanese festival fare), plus an area for crowds to gather, mingle, and enjoy the occasional show.

One we saw was some kind of performance art we could not figure out: a guy dressed in only a loin cloth, head band, and white paint, standing on a box, imploring a small boy to hold his hand as he pointed off into the distance. If the boy let go, the guy slowly turned with a doleful expression as if to beg for the boy to hold his hand–and when the boy did, the guy turned away again to point somewhere. Frankly, it weirded me out–I felt like calling Child Protective Services.

On our way out, we ran into a fun little activity: a bike-riding training session for little kids. We were wondering why there were so many kids bicycling along our path, until we ran into this.

It was mostly kids seriously trying to learn how to ride, riding in on their training wheels and discarding them for the course. As Sachi and I walked past, we heard an erstwhile young boy intone, “One, two, three!” as he took off for yet another try. They were so cute.

Then we saw this:

Sachi had to explain to me that it was not a firearm enthusiast’s tour bus, but a tour bus from Gunma Prefecture.

After the festival, we headed over to Shinjuku Gyouen–more on that tomorrow.

Wow. Reading this editorial from the WSJ had me sitting there for a while trying to figure out if it was clever satire. After the third or fifth paragraph, however, the article leaned more toward technical market stuff, and the possibility of satire eased. Still, had the beginning and end been published in The Onion, word for word, I would have accepted it as rank satire without a second thought. In essence, the editorial blames the recent economic collapse on secularism. Yep, we’re back to the golden oldie: if something bad happens, it’s because we aren’t being religious enough. Let’s begin with a canard that the piece uses as a theme:

And so it will come to pass once again that many people will spend four weeks biting on tongues lest they say “Merry Christmas” and perchance, give offense. Christmas, the holiday that dare not speak its name.

Here we go again. First of all, I know of no one who is reluctant to say “Merry Christmas”–it is repeated endlessly during the holiday season, just like the endless loops of Christmas carols that play on so many radio stations. This is pure fiction. It arose when some businesses, in order to include all of their customers, started giving the generic “Happy Holidays” greeting.

“Happy Holidays” is not anti-Christian, any more than “people” is anti-male. The whole “War on Christmas” attitude is intentionally blind to the distinction between inclusiveness and exclusiveness. “Happy Holidays” includes Christmas, as well as all other religious celebrations. Pressuring people to say “Merry Christmas” instead, on the other hand, is exclusive–it specifically shuts out all other belief systems except for Christianity. When speaking person-to-person, there’s nothing wrong with any specific greeting–but when addressing a large number of people, one must be general. One would not call a crowd of men and women “gentlemen.” Similarly, you say “Happy Holidays” to address everyone during the holiday seasons. Christians who are offended by this are effectively saying that no other belief system deserves recognition.

The very people who whine about the “War on Christmas” are the ones who are shutting people out, waging a war on non-Christians. The rest of us are just sitting here, rolling our eyes at their thinly-veiled bigotry.

While the “War on Christmas” is a theme of the opinion piece, the central thesis is that secularism causes moral and therefore systemic collapse:

What really went missing through the subprime mortgage years were the three Rs: responsibility, restraint and remorse. They are the ballast that stabilizes two better-known Rs from the world of free markets: risk and reward.

Responsibility and restraint are moral sentiments. Remorse is a product of conscience. None of these grow on trees. Each must be learned, taught, passed down. And so we come back to the disappearance of “Merry Christmas.”

It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.

The point for a healthy society of commerce and politics is not that religion saves, but that it keeps most of the players inside the chalk lines. We are erasing the chalk lines.

Of course, the author’s primary error here is to assume that the collapse happened because the ones responsible for the collapse had lost god and therefore their morality. They provide no evidence for this aside from the claim that using “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” was somehow related. They apparently assume that at some point in time in the past, a market full of people defined primarily by their lust for money and not at all for their religion was god-fearing and therefore restrained and responsible, and that the subsequent loss of their religious ways (apparently brought on by a few scattered advertisements which said “Happy Holidays!” instead of “Merry Christmas!”) caused them to instead go after risk-and-reward. Um, yeah, right. That’s what caused it all.

All of this comes back to a recurring sermon: religion equals morality, and you can’t even have morality if you’re not religious–you can only pretend to, by mimicking Christians. The solution, as it is often expressed, is simply to make religion present where the problem exists, which is why you get people saying that the answer to moral decay in youth is to introduce classroom prayer and post the ten commandments on the schoolroom walls. This kind of superficial application of morality reminds me of the time I worked for a religion-backed organization which required it’s managers to be Christian. The idea was, theoretically, to assure the moral tenor of the management. My immediate boss, as a result, converted to Christianity–despite the fact that he was not in the least interested in the church–while at the same time maintaining an adulterous affair and doing other immoral stuff I won’t go into here. In other words, it was all about appearance, not actual practice. Oh, sure, the organization’s intent for morality was sincere–they simply failed to recognize what morality was and how it works with people. They made the same error as the writer quoted above, believing that the mere presence of religion induces moral behavior.

While religion can be used to stimulate moral behavior, it does not do so automatically nor exclusively. Religion can just as easily stimulate immoral behavior as it can moral behavior; it depends upon the examples chosen and the themes and applications of the lesson. Similarly, non-religious teaching can have an equal effect: it depends upon the examples you choose and how you teach the lesson. The two are equal–both tools, neither one a magical cloak that bestows morality. The key is in the lesson, not the example. Sounds simple, but the writer quoted misses it completely: you get moral behavior by teaching morality; religion is simply one vehicle for that, and can lead people in the wrong direction just as easily as any other vehicle.

Now, the author, like many religious people, is probably working from a central assumption: that fear of god and damnation sets people on the right track. This is what often what religious people are thinking when they say that introducing god stimulates morality; they may overtly talk about learning lessons and so forth, but what they’re feeling in their gut is related more to punishment; when talking about remorse, it is fear of paying the price down the line. In short, “if I think about god when I’m doing something wrong, I become fearful and change my ways.”

There are several problems with this “moralizing” quality of religion. First, it is a sense born not of compassion for others, but instead of fear for one’s self. It is a morality forced upon the individual from the outside–much weaker intrinsically than a decision to act rightly despite believing that there would be no adverse consequences for acting wrongly. But so long as one believes that god is watching, then what difference does it make? Well, first there is the fact that it is fear-based and not compassion-based; those feelings will spill out into other areas of the person’s behavior. But the larger hazard here is the assumption that everyone will react to this outward pressure in the same way. I can see several ways that ‘god-fearing’ Christians could get around this.

For example, many rationalize their immoral behavior. In economics, one does so by passing the buck–for me alone, this would be wrong, but it is my responsibility to do this for the company. In life in general, people do this all the time in a variety of ways, one very common version being “they deserve this.” As with the death penalty, where we feel we are entitled to take life because of the actions of others. In short, we can do something immoral because someone else did something immoral; this can even be extended through the concept of pre-emptive strike: I can do something immoral because I expect that someone else will do it. Another common rationalization is “I’m not really doing that,” using semantics as moral cover. I’m not stealing, I’m delivering a well-deserved lesson, or I’m getting back what I think I deserve, so forth and so on. There are any number of ways to do immoral things but rationalize that they are somehow all right.

You may notice something: none of the above are specific to religion, anyone can use them to skirt morality. And that’s part of the point: Christians aren’t immune to the same rationalizations used by everyone else.

There are, however, other ways related to religion-as-morality-teacher where the application of the fear-god principle won’t work. There’s the brand of Christian who has learned that they can do something wrong, but make up for it later and be forgiven. And there is the interpretation-of-scripture excuse, where you can take whatever passage you like from the bible and read it any way you like. Or the religious person who believes they cannot be forgiven and are already going to hell, so why not? Then there are people who are not strongly religious, who rely only on religion for morality but don’t really believe that god is watching or will punish them in hell. Reminders of Christianity won’t have an effect on them.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Introducing religion is far from a guarantee that people will act morally.

I have written on this kind of things before, but this WSJ author dredged up all of that and a lot more. Prior writings include the source of morality (religion is not the source), the weakness of the ten commandments as a moral guide, The ability to use scripture to justify immoral acts, and the view that there is a war against religion when, if anything, the war is against atheism, fought by the religious.

Believe it or not, secularism is not the root of all evil, or even most of it.

You wouldn’t think that Sarah Palin could get much worse than repeatedly crowing about saying “thanks but no thanks to Congress for the Bridge to Nowhere” after it was so painfully demonstrated that she lobbied for it and then kept the money after it was killed. You’d think that she’d have a hard time topping the $150,000-plus shopping spree followed by her denial that she was involved in an inventory as she went home to do an inventory. You’d think that she could hardly be more tone-deaf than to claim that she was cleared and vindicated when a bipartisan committee found that she had abused her power, then crowed about how her own hand-picked team of cronies exonerated her. One would think it very difficult indeed to get be more politically inappropriate than to claim that proximity to Russia gave her foreign policy credentials worthy of a president, or not to be able to name a single newspaper or magazine that she read. And so on and so forth, you get the idea.

But Palin, it seems, is the gift that just keeps on giving. The Rising Star of the Republican Party had a PR event in Wasilla today as she used her powers as governor to grant full amnesty and pardon to a Turkey:

Now, this is usually an event to show how soft-hearted a political executive is, how merciful and loving they are. You know, the turkeys get to retire to a petting zoo, and the kids get to go “ooh!” and “ahh!” at the sweetness of it all.

So it probably doesn’t speak too greatly of her political acumen when she decides to treat the kiddies to her follow-up interview… in front of a pen full of turkeys with a guy slaughtering the birds over a blood-soaked killing trough. I kid you not:

Yep. That’s Sarah, just after the turkey in the background stops struggling in the slaughtering funnel, as the guy with the blood-stained trousers looks back at Palin and the camera–she says, “Certainly we’ll even invite criticism for doing this too, but at least this was fun!”

You can’t buy publicity like that. Chiefly because no one would want it.

Oh, Sarah, please run for president in 2012!

What’s going on with Obama’s nomination of Janet Napolitano as Homeland Security chief? Is Napolitano truly the best-qualified person for the job? Does it have to do with Napolitano being an early Obama supporter? Does she really want that job? Compared to being a governor, is DHS secretary a plum posting?

Here’s the thing: if Napolitano leaves office, Republicans run away with not one, but potentially two prizes. First, Napolitano would be replaced by a Republican lieutenant governor, and second, it would make it much more unlikely that Napolitano would run against John McCain for his Senate seat in 2010–not impossible, but much more unlikely. And Napolitano is the only candidate likely to knock McCain out and gain a seat for the Dems. So this move hands the GOP a governorship and helps them retain a Senate seat. What gives?

Is it purely coincidence that this news broke very soon after Obama met with McCain? Or am I just being overly suspicious here?

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First it was automobile honchos flying luxurious and incredibly expensive private jets to Washington to ask for taxpayer money to bail out their companies. Now it’s bank executives bailing out with golden parachutes right before the parachutes expire with the acceptance of bailout money–robbing the institutions of substantial chunks of the money taxpayers are going to have to pump back into them. It’s as if the executives are brashly and unapologetically continuing their ways of opulent greed, not even trying to put on a show.

The auto execs are piling on the excuses for private jets, but none add up. Their primary excuse is one of security, but they only cite the dangers of kidnapping when the executives travel to dangerous countries. Excuse me? When was the last time someone was kidnaped on a plane or before they got to customs at an airport? Please. If special circumstances warrant extra security, then lease a plane, or make other arrangements. Another excuse is access to telephones and email–another BS argument, as first class on most airlines include such services. Another excuse is the ability to talk in private–as if this were really an unfixable dilemma for the short periods of time execs are in first class on a jet. Provisions can be made, easily, to get around any and all of these without paying tens of millions of dollars–now taxpayer dollars–to maintain a fleet of luxury jets, which are in fact nothing but a pricey perk.

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Interesting about that SOFA pact that Bush arranged. It essentially committed the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq by 2011, laying out a distinct timeline for the exit of U.S. troops. Now, maybe Bush had no choice, and would have been in the tricky position of being told to get out of Iraq now if he hadn’t agreed to it. But essentially what it does is rob the Republicans of the chance to say that Obama was responsible for whatever bad stuff happened as a result of the U.S. pulling out of Iraq. They can no longer say that Obama lost the war and caused whatever havoc to erupt because he pulled the troops out–because Bush has now taken on the mantle of the one who pulled out the troops.

Of course, truth rarely gets in the way of Republican political attacks–they’ll still blame Obama for pulling out the troops, but it’ll be harder for them to make that stick. They’ll try to say that it’s how Obama pulled them out, or something he did or was responsible for along the way. Hell, they’re already blaming the recession on Obama, they’ll find some way to blame him for everything bad that happens, no matter how blatant the double-standard. Look at how they blamed Bill Clinton for “decimating” the military, when it was Bush 41 who did most of the cutting. Still, this SOFA agreement does take a good deal of the sting out of whatever attacks they want to launch in the future.

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It seems that al Qaeda would have been much happier with John McCain. Obama’s election has al Qaeda rattled, as they have now lost a powerful recruiting tool and support mechanism. With Obama set to close down Guantanamo, put an end to torture, oversee the withdrawal of troops in Iraq, and re-brand the American image around the world, people in the Muslim world are a lot less likely to offer al Qaeda support or approval. Not to mention that Obama is set to re-focus American and international military efforts of the heart of al Qaeda’s operations and probably strengthen the investigative and prosecutorial efforts to curtail the organization’s activities.

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This is quite something. Bush, at the G20 conference, joined the lineup of world leaders–but was conspicuously detached from all the greeting, hugging, and hand-shaking. As almost everyone else engaged in a great deal of enthusiastic welcoming, Bush simply walked past most of them, and everyone simply ignored Bush. A few times, Bush looked up at people in the upper row, as if to gauge wether or not a greeting was in order–and then walked on as no hand was extended to him. A CNN commentator likened Bush to the “most unpopular kid in high school.” Watch:

Sad.

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Want some fun? Miss your old Super Mario Brothers game? Play Super Obama World.

Convicted felon Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens has, apparently, recognized that Begich’s victory is now inevitable, and has officially conceded the race. Which means, one can presume, that Stevens will not shell out the $15,000 for a recount–which means the drama is over and the election decided. And the Democrats chalk up one more vote in the Senate to help Obama get the job done come January.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, as the official recount gets started, Al Franken scores a victory as a court gives him access to documentation of rejected absentee ballots, allowing his campaign to find ballots that might have been thrown out mistakenly and have them readmitted. With 18% of the recount done, Franken picked up about 40 votes, and now is behind by only 174.

We’re down to 8,000 votes left to be counted, and Democrat Mark Begich has now doubled his lead over convicted felon and Republican Ted Stevens. Stevens, who had a 3,000-vote lead before early and absentee ballots were counted, saw his lead dwindle and then disappear, and now Begich has almost as much a lead as Stevens had held–2,374 at the moment–and with so few votes left to count, it is virtually unthinkable that Stevens could pull ahead.

However, the game is not entirely over. While Begich’s lead is now safely outside the margin that would require a recount, Stevens could still ask for one, and it would only cost him $15,000–chump change that could easily be made up with a bribe or two. On the other hand, Alaska’s ballot system is said to be reliable enough that a recount would have little chance of changing the outcome, and there is likely to be a fair amount of pressure on Stevens to let it be, by Republicans who would rather not deal with the spotlight of a convicted felon who stands to be ejected from the Senate anyway clawing for the slightest chance to overturn the standing results.

Considering the unlikeliness of Stevens winning and the probability of him being thrown out of the Senate even if he wins, I am not sure that I agree with the Alaska Daily News when they say a recount is likely to happen.

It looks like one way or another, Alaska is pretty much a lock for the Democrats. Next up: Minnesota, where Franken stands a better-than-average chance of overturning Norm Coleman’s 215-vote lead in the state’s mandatory recount.

Update: With only 2500 absentee ballots left to count, Democrat Mark Begich now leads by 3,700 votes. The news agencies are calling this a “win” for Begich. So now we have to wait until Stevens decides whether he will concede or pay for a recount.

I have always taken job hunting seriously. I feel that it’s something you have to take on whole-heartedly, not half-assed. Me, I hunt down all job resources I can find, weed and sort, schedule interviews (schedule a few throwaways first so you can get some practice in), research the job and the company as well as you can, dress up and arrive a few minutes early (not too early), so forth and so on. In the end, if you’ve done it right, then you will have a few good job offers at least, and can take your pick.

But nowadays I am on the other end of the process. Like I was ten years ago, I now find myself making, not reading, the classifieds listings and sorting through resumes. Between then and now were the blissful years of only working, but recently I was called back in for a spell to manage again for a while. And it is depressing to see what comes forth when you list a job.

I mean, seriously. Far more than half the applicants do not have the basic, bottom-of-the-barrel, “must-have” qualifications for the job. Okay, maybe they think that they’ll get lucky, maybe they hope that the employer is aiming too high. But some of these people clearly just shoot out resumes to everyone in sight–the scattershot approach. Clumsy. Messy. Maybe even desperate. But hey, at the very least, take the trouble to send a separate email to every employer instead of lumping them all together in the Cc list for all to see.

You wouldn’t believe how sloppily some people put together these things. This time around, we needed several different positions filled, and included several in the same ad. Very few specified which position they were applying for, even though the positions were widely variant; I wound up having to read the resumes closely and guessing which position the person is applying for. Sometimes I have to read really close, because the information is often muddled. Education histories don’t specify what major the person’s degree was in. Employment histories leave out vital details. Heck, one person didn’t even bother to add which city he lived in.

Reading these things, it really makes me want to write down a primer on how to write a good resume. So here goes. Note that this is for an average job calling for moderate experience and qualifications–if it’s a minimum-wage job, just send a one-pager; if it’s for Rocket Science, then maybe send a tome. But most times, it’s in between. Points to consider:

• Format Counts: as superficial as it may seem, careful attention to formatting makes a difference. Don’t use templates–anyone who reads resumes for a living has seen them all and can spot the people who use the standard forms. Use a good font–Optima for sans serif, Garamond for serif. I can’t explain why, but many outstanding applicants I have interviewed had Garamond resumes. Use character spacing, small caps, regular tab settings, the works. Try to make it look neat, organized, and elegant. How your resume looks tells the employer how important this is to you.
• (If by email) Save your resume as a PDF: send both MS Word and PDF formats if you must, but PDF preserves formatting perfectly, and is a universal format.
• Use a cover letter: a cover letter is like a thesis statement–it explains very quickly to the employer why they should hire you. Explain what position you are applying for, and list the basics as to why you’re qualified. The cover letter should be three medium-length paragraphs–not too brief, not too long. If you’re sending your resume by email, then give a truncated cover letter in the email, and a full one in the cover page of your resume.
• Avoid the clichés: don’t say that you’re a “team player,” or that you “want to make a positive contribution to the company.” (Yes, I actually get those.) Be a bit more original than that. Sculpt your patter to fit the position. Don’t go too far or else you’ll make your interviewer gag. Reign it in.
• Cover the basics: Put your name, full address, telephone number(s), email address, and all vital information on the resume. Sounds basic, but you’d be surprised at how many people mess up this stuff.
• Customize: don’t use the same resume for every application. Research each job you apply for. Find out something about the company and the job you are applying for, and rewrite that specific resume to match it. Several times I have gotten resumes that were obviously intended for a different job, and it makes the applicant seem like they don’t give a damn. Generalized resumes usually give a weaker impression.
• Make it easy for the employer to be impressed: I can’t tell you how many times I have had to scour resumes for any indication that the person has the qualifications for the job. It should all be apparent, right up front. Education first–be brief but informative. Degree, major, university, years, honors. Then employment history–but here’s where you have to be careful. Don’t just go listing every job you’ve ever had. Do you think I care if you were a waiter at a pizza joint if you are applying for a job as a graphic designer? Okay, if you leave all of that out then there will be big holes and the employer will wonder why. So categorize: list the positions relevant to the job you are applying for first, then list other positions later, under a different heading. But don’t make the employer sift through every part-time and temp job you’ve had in order to find the few jobs that show you have the experience they want.
• Be specific where it counts: When you list qualifications specifically relevant to the position, then you go into detail. Make sure they’re aware that you know how to do the job in question. If you are applying for a job managing a bookstore, then mention the specific duties you had when you worked for Barnes & Noble, but leave out the details of how you were the personal fitness trainer to that country & western singer, no matter how cool that was.
• Be thorough but brief: Don’t take 30 pages to list the stunning array of publications you’ve authored and seminars you’ve given. Keep it to 2 pages, maybe 3. One page is too short, often not giving me enough reason to be impressed; more than three is showing off. If you’ve got so much, list only the most impressive stuff, and then add a note that there’s more where that came from “upon request.” If they’re interested, they’ll request. If you absolutely must, then send a brief resume and an “extended” resume–don’t force them to read a novel.
• Add references: most jobs will want them, and they will check them. List them in your resume. If you have letters of reference, okay–but make sure to give email addresses and telephone numbers for them to check, and alert your reference people that they may be contacted.
• Have everything ready, on request: anticipate what the employer might ask for. Have copies of every degree, every college transcript, every letter of reference, every supporting document you can think of, ready to fax/email/carry in upon request. They will ask for it; “I’ll have to look into getting that for you” is less impressive than “here, if you want the originals let me know and I’ll get them for you as soon as I can.”
• Spell check: nothing says “don’t hire me” more than spelling errors on your resume. Don’t just check for the squiggly red lines, actually read the thing, several times, and look for any errors, in spelling, wording, style, etc.

That’s everything that comes to mind right now. Follow these rules and your resume should be in the top 5 percent at least. As depressing as these resumes sometimes get, I always have the assurance that if I ever need to look for a job, I will most definitely stand out amongst the applicants.

There’s been a lot of talk from the right that the United States today is a “center-right” nation; I noted this from Bay Buchanan about a week ago, and we’ve been hearing it a lot since–obviously it’s a widely-distributed talking point the right wing has created in order to give the impression that conservatives are still effectively, if not titularly, in control of things.

Of course, the idea is pretty silly, and falls apart under inspection–and not even close inspection at that. For the past two Congressional elections, Democratic candidates have been winning in large numbers–not just the Senators, where conservative seats have been coming up for challenge in larger numbers, but in the House as well, where everyone must be elected every two years. Obama–the recently elected Democratic president (with a bigger share of the popular vote than any president in the previous four elections), will have a near-super-majority in both houses this time, with more numbers on his side than any Republican president in the past, oh, who knows how long.

But then there is the fact that Americans self-identify as Republicans less and less, and as Independents and Democrats more; it’s hard to imagine a time when the right-wing brand name has been weaker.

Let’s put it this way: if the Republicans had the same thing the Democrats have now: super-majorities in both houses of Congress with the numbers promising to shift even more in their direction two years from now, a popular president in the White House who won by a very comfortable popular margin, and name-brand identification of the Democrats tanking–do you think they would accept claims that the nation was “center-left”? Hell no, they wouldn’t even accept the notion that the nation was center-right. They would claim that the nation had become solidly right-wing and would accept no argument about it, period.

The Dems are hardly that strident, but they do have one thing straight: whatever the nation is right now, it is certainly not on the right of the center line. How much to the left the country has tilted is yet to be seen, but it’s more than just a tiny bit, that’s for sure.

This latest “center-right” myth is simply yet another attempt to work the refs and create a myth that reality is much more right-wing than all the actual evidence says it is. In that sense, this is right in line with myths such as the “liberal media” canard we’ve been bombarded with for so long.

There are a lot of reasons I prefer Mac over Windows (if you’ve read this blog regularly then you may scoff at that understatement), but let me give two examples of very small details that make a big difference sometimes.

First is the use of arrow keys and cursor movement in text. In Windows, using the left- and right-arrow keys to move left or right in text will go character by character. The up and down arrow keys only go up and down line by line–they cannot be used to jump to the beginning or the end of a line at either end of the document.

Go ahead–if you are using Windows, go to a text box or your browser’s address bar. Click somewhere in the middle, and then try to use the up-arrow key: after you reach the top line, nothing happens. You have to either keep tapping or hold down the left-arrow key until the cursor gets to the beginning of the line, or else use an alternate move (function-arrow-key?), something involving a two-handed keyboard move.

On the Mac, if you hit the up-arrow key after reaching the top, the cursor pops to the beginning of the line–or to the end if you down-arrow beyond the last line. This is such a natural and easy move that I am frankly astounded that Windows doesn’t do it. In fact, it seems to even be Microsoft’s preference–if you use MS Word for Mac, Microsoft has actually disabled this feature (at least with the up-arrow key), making it impossible for you to use it in that suite.

Another small thing that annoys me constantly in Windows is when you start an app and there is a delay in the app’s opening–sometimes for severals tens of seconds. The delay itself is annoying, but the real problem is that Windows, as far as I can tell, has no way of letting you know if the app is really opening or not. It usually looks just like nothing happened, that your command did not register. Many users think that they didn’t click the icon right or select the menu item correctly, and will wonder for a bit as to whether or not the app is actually opening. Worse, the machine will register repeated attempts to open the app, causing the situation to worsen. I have often seen people who think the move didn’t work retry opening the app, sometimes many times, only to have multiple instances of the same app open once the system has gotten around to drawing some actual windows.

On the Mac, this never happens. If you try to open an app, and you’re not sure if it registered, just look at the Dock–if the app is opening, then the Dock icon should be bouncing, or will have an indicator below showing that it has opened already. And if you happen to try to open the app again, it won’t open the same app more than once.

Stuff like this is what makes the UI so much more enjoyable.

You’ve probably heard of the surge in gun sales after Obama got elected. This usually happens after a Democrat is elected president, but it strikes me as unusually short-sight and dim-witted.

For one thing, Obama’s stands on gun control are pretty moderate (not too different from John McCain’s, in fact), and a recent Supreme Court decision has upheld gun ownership rights; the idea that gun bans are imminent is weak at best.

However, far more significantly, any new gun laws that come about would be foreseeable pretty far in advance, especially any laws that outlawed various types of guns–the NRA and the Republican Party would both see to it that everyone knew what was happening well before it got to a vote. Obama won’t even take office for another two months, and the new Democratic gains in Congress similarly won’t take effect until then.

So the rush of gun buyers–in some places, up as much as 60%–is panic-buying by people who, to be quite frank, are not too smart. It seems to speak to their paranoia–that they seem to think that Obama and/or the Democrats will stealthily craft gun bans overnight and will send jack-booted thugs to round them and their weapons up the next morning. I would not be surprised if many of these people bury their guns in their backyards or otherwise try to hide them somehow.

Alternately, one could consider this opportunistic buying–people who had their eyes on such guns anyway, and this simply gave them an excuse to go out and make the expenditure. I doubt, however, that this explains all or even most of it, especially given the nature of the rhetoric out there, and how gullibly many hard-core right-wingers bought into so much of what the McCain campaign fed them.

I know that I have often pointed out that right-wingers blame the other side for everything all the time, but still, they’re going to extremes with this one.

For years after Bush took office, the wingnuts claimed that everything bad about the economy was Clinton’s fault. The idea was that Clinton dug us so deep into a hole that Bush could not possibly be blamed for anything bad that happened economically (though any progress was immediately awarded to Bush).

So, naturally, since Bush, after eight years in office, is handing off a far worse recession, maybe even a depression, to his successor, Obama will get the same grace period, right?

Ha! Of course not. Obama won’t even take office until two months from now, but the wingnuts aren’t wasting any time–despite Obama not even being the president-elect for a whole two weeks yet, the right-wing talking heads are already blaming our current downturn on him, calling it “The Obama Recession.”

What’s the job description for a wingnut? “No critical thinking skills required”? Oh, I’m sure they’ll have some rationalization as to how it just happened to work out the way they’re claiming. I’m just surprised that they are being so transparent about it. I expected them to wait until a few months after Obama took office to start blaming everything on him. But now, anyone who accepts this has to believe that Obama has been working for years behind the scenes to engineer this recession, or that he immediately inherits the recession and the blame for it a few months before he’s able to do anything.

Like the claims made by the wingnuts during the campaign, this new line of crap will be believed only by the converted, by the Kool-Aid drinkers and the Loyal Bushies. The blatant nature of the lie is so transparent, however, that this stands to only help Obama with the moderates.

So, keep spouting, Limbaugh, Hannity, and all the others–keep spouting this laughable lie. The more you do, the more you highlight the fact that it’s a lie, and the more people will remember that it’s a lie for quite some time. You could have waited a decent amount of time, until after Bush had faded away and people had been hurting for a while, and then started blaming Obama–and a lot more people would have bought into it. But now, whenever you try to do that over the next few years, all anyone has to do is to remind everyone that you’ve been saying the same thing since two months before Obama even took office–and at that, the accusation will fall flat.

Things are looking pretty good for Democrats in Alaska and Minnesota. In Alaska, Democrat Mark Begich now actually holds the lead, as early votes and absentee ballots continue to come in. First, a report came out when Begich passed Stevens and led by three votes; at the end of the day, Begich led Stevens by 814 votes, a turn-around from Stevens’ initial 3,000-vote lead. Some 35,000 votes still remain to be counted, but they promise more of the same, and it is unlikely that Stevens will recover. Still, it’s not over till it’s over.

In Minnesota, things are looking good for Al Franken. How can you tell? Because his Republican opponent, Norm Coleman, is so worried about the recount showing that Franken won that he has gone into full-fledged Florida-2000 mode, and is desperately screaming to everyone who will listen about how the recount is corrupt and invalid. Unfortunately, unlike Bush in 2000, Coleman faces a mandatory recount, does not have Katherine Harris skewing for him, cannot depend on the Supreme Court to select him, and cannot hold the whole country hostage by threatening to withhold the junior Senator from Minnesota from the people–it’s just not as urgent as not having a president.

Despite the right wing’s tinfoil-hat claims of election fraud, reports have been that the recount process has been strongly credible; even one Coleman staffer professed surprise at how transparent the process is, and the Republican governor confirmed that he sees no fraud or irregularities with the vote count. Meanwhile, Franken’s team has not been allowing Coleman’s legions of lawyers overrun them; Franken has sued for the release of voter lists which could reveal illicitly disqualified votes, citing one example of a woman who suffered a stroke being disenfranchised because her signature no longer matched.

With the recount, Coleman’s lead (already down to 206 from his initial lead of 725) stands to evaporate just like Stevens’ did. That would bring the Dems up to 59 votes, much closer to a bulletproof majority which could stifle Republican plans to obstruct progress and shut down Obama’s ability to carry out his promises.

A lot of non-theistic or theo-phobic Democrats have been kind of worried about Obama and his religion; some felt that he was putting on a show, and others were concerned that his support of faith-based organizations signaled that he was a closet Christian waiting to continue Bush’s legacy of merging church and state. I think both were wrong.

From an interview Obama gave in March 2004, before his famous speech at the Democratic convention–this is pretty much what I want to hear from a Christian President of the United States:

Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion. I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I mean, I’m a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law. I am a great admirer of our founding charter, and its resolve to prevent theocracies from forming, and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root ion this country.

As I said before, in my own public policy, I’m very suspicious of religious certainty expressing itself in politics.

Now, that’s different from a belief that values have to inform our public policy. I think it’s perfectly consistent to say that I want my government to be operating for all faiths and all peoples, including atheists and agnostics, while also insisting that there are values that inform my politics that are appropriate to talk about.

A standard line in my stump speech during this campaign is that my politics are informed by a belief that we’re all connected. That if there’s a child on the South Side of Chicago that can’t read, that makes a difference in my life even if it’s not my own child. If there’s a senior citizen in downstate Illinois that’s struggling to pay for their medicine and having to chose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer even if it’s not my grandparent. And if there’s an Arab American family that’s being rounded up by John Ashcroft without the benefit of due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

I can give religious expression to that. I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper, we are all children of God. Or I can express it in secular terms. But the basic premise remains the same. I think sometimes Democrats have made the mistake of shying away from a conversation about values for fear that they sacrifice the important value of tolerance. And I don’t think those two things are mutually exclusive.

This is not someone who says that god told him to invade Iraq; this is not someone who is trying to make religious dogma into law, whether it comes from true belief or pandering to a constituency. This is not someone who believes that you can only be moral if you are religious. This is someone who understands and upholds the Separation of Church and State.

Bush, I would be suspicious of, precisely because of his record: he was unabashedly willing to turn Christian law into U.S. law, Christian dogma into federal policy. When conservative Christian politicians talk about faith and religious values “informing” their official actions, they usually mean something else. Even when they pretend that religion is just showing them a moral way, the end result is usually an unacceptable intrusion of religious rules into public law. That’s how we get the whole abortion debate; that’s how we get bad family planning rules; that’s how we get judges willing to allow courtrooms to become display rooms for religious ornamentation. This is more than religion “informing” policy and law, it is religion dictating policy and law.

But what Obama is talking about is something else. He’s not talking about transferring the end product of religious faith into public policy and law; he’s talking about using the basic moral lessons, the beginning of religious faith–not the church doctrine–acting as a guide to making decisions. There’s a huge difference there.

For example, “love thy neighbor” is a moral principle; it tells us to show compassion to others, a general rule which addresses our own actions and from where our moral direction should come. But “homosexuality is bad” is something completely different: it is not a moral principle directing our own actions, it is a political interpretation of scripture written in primitive times, which proscribes the actions of others. Not a direction, but a conclusion. What Obama refers to as “religious certainty.” Night and day.

Obama’s take is the former: to learn lessons from the Christian faith which set a moral compass, which speak to our own feelings and compassion, which guide our hearts. This is completely different from someone taking the end product of organized religion and its political process and trying to implement it as the law which all must obey. Night and day.

I am an agnostic with leanings toward Deism, and I fear the marriage of church and state as a prelude to theocratic fascism. This is not to say that I hate Christianity or even dislike it. Nor that I need to see organized religion banned from the Earth. I simply have seen too much of the worst of Christianity applied to public policy and law and know that the consequences can only get worse if such continues.

What I do not fear are Christian principles–if they are indeed Christian principles; but not old-testament principles excused by a profession of the love of Christ. Yes, if they are a call to self-discipline and spiritual growth; but no, not the application of the political will of a stagnant “religious” body more intent on enforcing rigid dogma based on fear and hate than it is on nurturing spiritual growth and compassion. There are people who follow the teachings and traditions of Christ, and then there are people who dress themselves in the splendor of his clothing and then go out with picket signs saying “God Hates Fags.”

As I have said before, if Christianity lived up to its name and held above all else the words and actions of Christ, the world would be a lot better place. But too many Christians do nothing of the sort; despite professing Christ as their redeemer, their lord and savior, or their favorite philosopher, they base their moral compass and their corporeal actions upon the more primitive and even feral guidelines of the old testament. Instead of turning the other cheek, they want an eye for an eye; instead of “he who is without sin,” they prefer to smite the wicked, with themselves being the judge of who is wicked and who is righteous. But it need not even be new vs. old testament–but rather simply following the spirit, the true philosophy, that being one of morality turned inward instead of outward, of showing compassion and assuming spiritual responsibility for one’s own self. You just don’t see that too often.

I suppose that this dovetails with the Republican mindset, where you have people professing an undying love of America but who clearly hate the people living in it; these “Christians” profess a love of Christ but turn away from him when it comes to his clearly expressed words and actions. It’s about professing love for something but rejecting it in fact, professing humility but acting arrogantly.

That is why, despite Obama’s history, despite his late decision to become a churchgoer, despite his exposure to other faiths and his tolerance for them, Obama strikes me as more of a genuine Christian than any of the fundamentalists of the religious right who praise Jesus but self-righteously practice intolerance, suspicion, and hate.

Obama, however–he’s a Christian I can believe in. And, I believe, a model for those who think faith should be a part of the political arena. As with all my other beliefs, my agnostic side tells me that I have to wait and see what the facts bear out. But as much as I can have faith, in this matter I do.