Piqued

Tonight at the Bible study I attend, the issue of abortion came up.  Our brief discussion inspired me to expand upon some points I made in a post a year ago, which led to a valuable exchange with some friends in the comments: read it here.

I won’t reiterate that entire post, but our conversation tonight reinforced my opinion that the pulpit really isn’t the right place to address this topic.  The moment the church starts making a religious issue out of abortion, we’ve conceded the idea that it is a judgment call that’s determined by personal beliefs.  If being pro-life garners its mandate from a religious movement, its adoption will be largely limited to that sphere.  This approach often leads to debating abortion on an emotional level with women who either wish to assert their feminine rights, or defend their decision in light of the motherly hardships they’d have to endure without the presence of a committed husband/father.  While I feel for the women in these situations, debating the issue in this way is completely beside the point and, again, implies that it is still a personal judgment call.

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My only magazine subscription is to Wired, a slick publication that appeals to society-aware geeks who are interested in science and technology and how they can make the world a better place.  It features everything from product reviews to well-researched articles on topics ranging from politics to medicine to open-source software.  The writing can be a bit sensational at times, but I think it makes it more enjoyable to read, and really conveys a sense of optimistic excitement over the potential in modern technology.  I don’t read the issues cover-to-cover, but there are frequently articles that I find very interesting.

One such article that I think well represents well the kind of varied and important subjects often featured in the magazine was in last year’s February issue.  Titled “The Truth About Autism,” it was a fascinating look at autism research and how our opinions of the condition have changed, with the aid of technology such as blogs and YouTube.

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I’m a fan of the “webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language” known as xkcd, and one of the recurring “hero” characters in it is Cory Doctorow, author and founder of former magazine and current blog Boing Boing.  I was perusing some of the older xkcd comics, most of which I’d already seen, and came across one of the references to Doctorow and decided to wikipedia him.  Turns out he’s a pretty interesting person, and a well-read and respected fiction author.  He’s really into comics and science fiction, as well as personal privacy, intellectual property right laws, and a host of other “nerdy” subjects, many of which interest me as well.  I then read about his latest novel, Little Brother, and some of the critical acclaim it had received.  It piqued my interest, so I looked into it more.  Turns out that Doctorow publishes all his books under the Creative Commons license, which is essentially a more flexible alternative to Copyrighting your work.  Creative Commons has been a great success online, along with GNU free documentation and other “share-friendly” licensing methods, and has many sites dedicated to works published under its “some rights reserved” protections.  The beauty of Creative Commons is that it preserves the content creator’s rights to profit from and retain ownership of their work (be it musical, literary, photographic, etc.) while recognizing that allowing the public to freely keep, share, and (optionally) modify artistic work can be a tremendous boon to their success.  To make a long story short, by being published under CC, Doctorow’s books like Little Brother are freely available, and he has a wide variety of text and ebook formats available for free, anonymous download on the book’s website.  If you’d like to know more about why an artist would choose to freely give away their works, read Doctorow’s explanation at the beginning of the book.

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Amid the woeful wailings of my conservative friends over Obama’s solid victory over McCain last night, I thought I’d share my take on how this election ended up.  As you can gather from my previous writings on the subject, I was no fan of McCain in the primaries and viewed him mainly as a lesser of two evils in this election.  I voted for Bob Barr on principle since I fully expected McCain to take Texas without my help.  So I’m not heartbroken that we won’t have McCain in office.  Yet as a libertarian-leaning conservative, I’m not excited about the prospect of four years of liberal power in Washington either.  Nevertheless, while I do wish Obama hadn’t won, there are a number of reasons why I’m not too upset either.  In fact, I think Obama’s victory can have some genuinely good effects, if he stays true to his rhetoric last night.

I’ll also point out that although I opposed Obama because of ideological disagreements, I didn’t buy into the fear-mongering that painted him as a Muslim foreigner who hung out with crazy domestic terrorists and hate-spewing preachers.  Yes, his black liberation pastor is rather extreme in his views and has said some pretty upsetting things, and yes Ayers took the whole anti-Vietnam war thing to some dangerous and irresponsible levels (long before he and Obama met).  But when you put these men’s actions and Obama’s relationships with them into context and try to put yourselves into the shoes of those involved, it becomes less severe than people make it out to be.  Troubling, yes.  Clear evidence that Obama will be a racist and terrorizing president, no. 

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In case you’re interested, I thought I’d share who I’m voting for this year and the reasons why.  For the lesser-known races, I mainly used the Dallas Morning News’ voter guide to decide, although I did look up the candidates’ website if I wanted more information.  Since I’m registered in the Brazos County, some of these picks are specific to that region.

President: Bob Barr (L).  If I wasn’t sure McCain was going to take Texas, I’d be voting for him instead since I do believe McCain to be a better choice than Obama (on purely ideological grounds).  However, since McCain is almost certainly going to win here (and if he doesn’t, he’d probably be so far behind nationally that Texas wouldn’t even matter), I’m voting for Barr because I tend to agree more with his positions than McCain’s and I want those ideas to get more recognition.  Barr is not likely to win anywhere, but if he gets more votes than is usual for a 3rd party and thus shows a growing movement among Americans toward traditional constitutional principles, then I’ll consider that a victory.

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