Merry Christmas

Today is the day we commemorate the birth and life of a man who, regardless of your religious beliefs, changed the world we live in hugely. For me and my family it is a day of joyous celebration and kinship. If you are able, hug those who you love and care about. Today is a good day.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Disappointment

I am a 20 year old man, born and raised an American. Today I must say I am disappointed in the face of our nation.

Tragedy is not something to be twisted to the gain of anything. Not personal wealth, not agenda, not pride, not social status, not anything. The phrase "Never let a crisis go to waste" (Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff to Obama and current Mayor of Chicago) should be treated as the evil it is.

Americans no longer really know how to deal with grief. Far too often we feel we must be seen to be doing something. Here is an excellent breakdown of exactly that. I beg of you, America, be willing to stand back and let the grief happen. Stop sticking your noses in it, stop trying to be seen doing something, stop.

Practically no Americans feel the full weight of the grief these families are experiencing. Some feel more than others. Some feel nothing at all, and feel worse about that than they do about the event. This event has been so publicized that everyone feels they should feel something. Just.... stop. Stop talking about it, stop thinking about it, stop moping about it. What's done is done. If the families need anything in the coming times, they will turn to trusted, close people. There is nothing we as Americans can do. We are doing harm by trying.

I want to call out a few particularly guilty parties. The media has had huge coverage of these killings in  recent days. Watch this. By glorifying these killers, plastering their faces and names over everything, you promote their behavior. A proper reaction to this is to strike their existence from the record. Do not publicize the killers name. Do not have a trial by media for him. This man (for I have to recant a statement in my last post. He is still human, and a child of God, for all that his actions are just about as evil as it is possible for a human to be) committed an act of evil, is dead, and will be taken to account for his actions. There's nothing more we can do to or about him. There's nothing to be done to help the families. There's a great deal of harm to be done by over-coverage. Just stop.

The number of corporations and businesses that have made certain public gestures in the past few days rather annoy me. Cerberus sold off the Freedom Group of firearms manufacturers. Cheaper Than Dirt temporarily suspended sale of firearms. Walmart pulled the Bushmaster brand from their shelves. There are others. These gestures are meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and just serve as publicity efforts. Matthew 6:5, "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward." If you feel compelled to do something, do it in secret. Do it in such a way that success is measured in how few people know you've done anything. THAT is service. That should be its own reward, if it is indeed a good thing you do.

President Obama, Joan Peterson, Diane Feinstein, and all others using this tragedy as an impetus for further gun control. Who the hell are you? You are manipulating this tragedy for the gain of your agenda. Tell me, would this attack have been any less evil had the killer used a gasoline or propane bomb? ANFO? A knife? A sword? A sharpened stick? Rocks? Evil is evil, and it will not be stopped by the laws of men. The tool is irrelevant to the will behind it. Stop dancing in blood.

Those on the other side of the argument, using this as further evidence of the need for armed teachers, armed guards, etc. you are equally reprehensible. If you can conclusively show that had there been an armed person in that school, then the attack wouldn't have happened, then we can talk. The fact that I agree with the theory does not change the fact that you too are guilty of dancing in blood.

Read this. That monster can be extended to all of humanity. There is evil in the world. It's part of what allows there to be good in the world. To shy away, to pretend it isn't there and will always be there for as long as humanity is humanity is foolish and naive. Pull it out. Face it as an individual. Come to grips with the fact that this world is not and cannot be perfect until the end of days. Figure out how you, my gentle reader, are going to deal with it. I get the feeling many of you already have, by the merit of my readership base.

Stop making this into a national issue. A tragedy befell a single community, though it hurts us all in different ways. Do not make this into more than it is.

Note: my personal religious sentiment does appear in this piece, though I endeavor to keep it largely secular and available to everyone. If you disagree with my religion, it does not mean you have to disagree with my larger point.

Absolute Evil

A few months ago, I tried to write a post about the differences between good and evil, and the fact that this world does in fact have some absolutes. I couldn't get it into any form I felt good enough to present to the world, so it died a lonely death.

It's time to go back to this topic.

This morning, a monster walked into a school in Connecticut and shot a great many people. According to initial reports, most of those people were children. This is, absolutely without question, Evil.

In our modern world, there is a trend towards explaining actions like these. Towards finding the "blame". Some blame guns. Some blame bad upbringings. Some blame mental illness, medications, or drugs. Some blame video games. If there was an unusual facet of the perpetrators life, odds are it will be at least considered as the thing to blame.  All of this is absolutely irrelevant.

The only thing to blame here is the perpetrator. What this monster did is Absolute Evil. Unquestioningly. The fault lies solely and entirely on it. Yes, 'it'. I think too highly of humanity to label this foul creature as among their number. I cannot express my utter revulsion for this being and its actions in words fit to print.

When I first heard about this, I wanted to crawl back in bed and hide away from the world. How could I bear being in a world like this? A world where innocent children, children not old in some cases to even know what a sin is, let alone be guilty of them, are murdered for simply being there. When such evil exists in the world, why bother getting out of bed? Quite simply, Edmund Burke put it best. "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing" (disputed attribution).  There will always be evil in this world, for as long as humans are human. Always. All we can do is stand against it as best we can. For there is good in the world, in addition to evil, should it only choose to be.

My tears, thoughts, and prayers go out to these families struck by the worst sort of tragedy. I cannot begin to fathom their loss. Nor can I fathom the pain caused by other acts of evil that happen around the world every single day. All I can say is that I will never back down. I will never step aside and allow evil to happen when I could have stopped it.

May God hold the souls of the deceased close to him, may their families find peace, and may the sins of the shooter weigh heavily upon his soul for all eternity.

Seahorses

I just wrote a paper I think is pretty darn good about the aquarium industry for a class. I want to wait until I have it graded to post it here to avoid plagiarism claims, but in the next couple days I'll post that.

Until then, how are you all? Any fun holiday plans?

Seahorses

I know not everyone shares my fascination with fish, but I daresay it would take a hard heart not to appreciate this. In the past few days, one of my dwarf seahorses gave birth. I saw one first last night as I was turning off the light, and have found two more since.

Dwarf seahorses live up to their name. They are all of an inch long tip to tail full grown. As you can perhaps imagine, the fry are significantly smaller. I can't say with certainty, but it looks for the moment like they are less than 8mm long. Based on relative sizing there's no way they popped out of dad that size, so at a guess I'd say they are 2-5 days old. I'll monitor their growth over the next few days and try to find a trend line.

These things are obscenely cute.