Conscription

If I am invited to a gay wedding and choose not to go for whatever reason, should our government force me to attend else I would be accused of homophobic intolerance? David Brooks has an op-ed that deals with the issue of the trade-offs between religious liberty and equality ... all in the light of Indiana's new Religious Freedom Restoration Act that has created a firestorm of religious intolerance ... this time spewing from those who normally require tolerance in others ... see: New York Times Op Ed. Like most of Brooksie's writings, this op-ed skates back and forth between the liberal and conservative takes on this religious-freedom controversy, but I think he is really saying that the ham-fisted backlash against Governor Mike Pence of Indiana is overdone. I agree.

"No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service" ... this is a frequent sign found at beach-side establishments. It seems to me that business' have certain rational prerogatives when it comes to what are acceptable for employees and customers. Yet these prerogatives have been proscribed so that certain groups are protected from arbitrary discrimination. Besotted drunks can be denied service at a bar, but cross-dressers cannot. Yet women can be forced to sit in the balcony of an Orthodox Jewish temple. Why? Because of the Constitutional notion of religious freedom. The rub obviously comes when such religious freedoms bump up against the latest fashion in protected behavior.

I can understand bakers being forced to cater gay weddings if they are the only game in town. But it seems a little conscripting to force them to violate their religious principles if there are multiple other willing options. Will President and Michelle Obama accede quietly to their girls entering into same-sex relationships? Can cross-dressers claim that no shoes and no shirts are part of their protected costumes? Will Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Computer, ever allow fundamentalists Christians to bring poisonous snakes to work as religious idols? Will a same sex marriage ever take place in a mosque?

This issue is far more complicated than our media is now allowing ...

Afterward: George Will has a nice turn of phrase when he labels those ranting about this new Indiana law (Apple's Tim Cook) as having "selective indignation" ... see: Daily Caller Story. And it also occurred to me that such phobics as Cook also are very quick off the blocks whilst people like Pence are a little more cerebral ... and often unprepared for such media sucker punches.

After Afterward: I had a analogous thought today ... how is the government forcing a fundamentalist Christian to cater a gay wedding any different from forcing a conscientious objector to serve in the front lines of the military? (Hint, also substitute fundamentalist Muslim for fundamentalist Christian and see if your answer is the same ... see: Louder with Crowder Video.

Abandoned

There is now a recognition that boys who have been abandoned by their fathers very early in life can grow into extremely successful adults.  The examples currently being bandied about are former President, Bill Clinton; Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com; President Barack Obama; Steve Jobs of Apple Computer; and Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp.  … and I’m sure that there are probably many others.  Whatever the underlying psychology of this phenomenon turns out to be, it does seem to suggest a possible interesting future potential.

Considering the degree of fatherly desertion that is now occurring pell mell in the United States among the black and Hispanic communities … and also growing among Caucasians … it would seem to me that America should expect a barrage of hard-driving prosperous males ... maybe females too … in the not too distant future.

What's NeXT?

One of the premier examples of the extraordinary entrepreneurial spirit in the United States, Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. has just sadly stepped down as its CEO yesterday.  An original founder of Apple Computer in 1976 (see Apple Computer.), who pioneered the Apple 1 computer kit, the Apple II, and the Macintosh with its innovative Graphical User Interface (GUI).  Jobs was ousted in 1984 and went on to found NeXT Computer (see NeXT Computer) with enormous financial backing ... including Warren Buffet. 

The 1986-released NeXT computer was not a commercial success, primarily, in my opinion, because it did not include a floppy disc drive.  Steve Jobs, in his typical visionary way, was years ahead of his time, substituting an early version of a CD-RAM for both a mass storage device and input/output (I/O) device.  This was one of the few mistakes Jobs ever made in his technical career ... primarily because it became difficult (and expensive) to move data and applications from the rest of cyberspace onto the NeXT computer and the data-access rates of this device were snail-slow.  Today, 25 years later, CD-RAMs are often the primary hardware I/O devices on personal computers ... and mass data storage is rapidly moving off of its miniature hard discs and onto static-RAM memory (such as flash drives).  Here, Steve was just a few years too soon.

But Jobs can easily be forgiven this one technical hiccup for, after returning to Apple in 1997, he went on to lead the creation of the IPod, the IMac, the IPhone, and the IPad (with its GUI on steroids) which have fostered enormous worldwide markets for American technology.  Even the Apple Store is a technology marketing innovation which can be partially attributed to Jobs.

Now, Steve Jobs is leaving and the future of Apple Inc. is in question.  One has to echo all the kudoes being lavished on Steve Jobs.  In fact, they may not be lauditory enough.  So, when The Barry gives his early September address to the nation with the shibolith "jobs, jobs, jobs," my mind will certainly wander to that health-plagued founder of Apple.