Nobody to vote for...


I haven't looked too much at the candidates yet. I really don't have a strong liking of any of them, so why should I? I was all for Hillary until I heard her on one talk show saying how she was going to close down all those nasty institutions that lend money to kids for college. What a nut! Is she serious?

I was dead set against voting for any sort of republican in order to counter the last 8 years of evil.

But all that is left is Obama:

So, I've started reading a little bit just to see what he's saying:

"We are not standing on the brink of recession due to forces beyond our control," Obama said in excerpts of a speech at a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wis. "The fallout from the housing crisis that's cost jobs and wiped out savings was not an inevitable part of the business cycle. It was a failure of leadership and imagination in Washington."

Why does he have to outright lie? I mean, he's got a Harvard law degree, so he can't be a complete idiot. If he's not a complete idiot, then one has to ask oneself: why is he outright lying then?

Yes, let's just use our imagination. The government has billions of dollars so the government ought to be able to help billions of Americans have enough money to keep them in their toys.

Grrr....

Basil

Inadvertent Humor, by Google

In the Seattle area and have a spare moment? Maybe we can tempt you with buying a new condo? Looking for a house? Hiring a homicide attorney?




So, here I was checking out the weather report at accuweather.com - I browse the next 10 days and find out about the big snow storm coming Dec 10-13. And then an ad in the corner catches my attention. Anyone care for a Murder Attorney?

"Yes, hello, is this Attorneys-R-Us?"

"Yes, I was wondering how much your murder rates are? I've got a neighbor I really can't stand."

Strange things...

~ Basil

Who to Vote For for President

Well, I haven't had very many ideas on this topic.

But I just came across this article, and it's pretty good:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/carlton1.html

I may end up voting for Ron Paul. I certainly believe in the principles that the author of this article has stated.

Who knows...

~ Basil

The Beautiful Seasons, Autumn

I'm rather late, waiting for our first snow, to post these photos. But here's some shots I took this fall along the Sammamish river in downtown Redmond.

An alternate path of the Sammamish River Trail:


Autumn Colors on the Sammamish River:





Reflections at a Storm Pond:









~ Photography by Basil

The Golden Compass

There's a great new movie out, and I suggest you all go see it!

Ok, perhaps I'm waxing a bit hyperbolic here. I really don't care whether you see it or not, but I think the great sensationalism about this movie among various Christian denominations underscores one of the most significant difference between Orthodox Christianity and all other forms of Christianity.

In a nut-shell both Roman Catholic and Protestant ethics is based on the heresy of Gnosticism, specifically Gnostic Dualism. Basically the idea is that there are two inseparable realms: the physical and the spiritual. These two realms are irreconcilable. The irreconcilability of these two realms leads to the obvious ethical consideration: we punish the physical in order to attain the spiritual. You see that in Protestant and Roman Catholic ethics all the time.

The only problem is, it is a heresy. Self-mortification was decried and confirmed as heretical at one of our Great and Holy Seven Ecumenical Councils. Not only that, but maintaining the concept that the physical and spiritual realms are irreconcilable denies the very heart of Christianity: the Incarnation in the Flesh of God. The fundamental point of our faith is that these two realms are no longer irreconcilable. God Himself became a man to prove that. God Himself became man so that spiritual and the physical may be united in one. It is only through that act that we, cut off from the spiritual here in a physical world, are actually able to attain the spiritual without leaving behind the physical.

The author of these books, and movie, believes that: Christianity is all about "ideological tyranny and the rejection of this world in favor of an idealized afterlife" and as such he is a self-proclaimed atheist. Have you read about Phillip Pullman's god? I'd be an athiest too if I believed God was like that!

The big problem here is not that this guy is an atheist. The big problem is that this guy has so much truth to draw upon to support his atheism!

For hundreds of years Christians have talked about this idealized world, and the rejection of this physical world we are in. But the problem is, that's heresy according to the Orthodox Christian teaching. We are in this world to transform the world, to elevate it to the realm of the ideal, to bring this world closer to God: not through suffering, not through self-inflicted pain, not through tyranny and oppression, but through liberation, through love, through through goodness and mercy. This is what the Orthodox Faith is all about.

Unfortunately, Orthodoxy has been under the yoke of Western teaching for quite some time now. I've actually heard Orthodox priests teach that God wants us to suffer. This concept has crept into the Church through several means: (1) In Orthodox seminaries in Russia in the 19th century most of the teachers were Jesuits; (2) Oft times our new "converts" fail to fully convert from their western ideology when they enter the Orthodox Church.

In these days when we have Muslims practicing and teaching Gnostic Dualism far and wide (for it really is one of the fundamental concerns of their faith that they destroy this world in favor of the next one), it is far more important that Christians return to the truth, return to the roots of Christianity: that God became a man so that we may become like God, not in the world to come, but in THIS world!

~ Basil

No Tea and Exploding Plates
The latest in Basiland

Well, here's a couple of the items I've been working on lately.

First there is No Tea, a web site (blog) devoted to my wife's grandmother's memoirs which were written in Russian, and then recently published in English Translation. Check out NoTea.org and NoTeaForFruit.com and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Next there's Exploding Plate, my exciting new blog at www.explodingplate.com - a place where I can grumble about all the trash we buy in our stores that breaks down shortly after you get it home and lose the receipt or shortly after the warantee expires. This way I won't have to pollute the noble FlyInTheHolyOil with my raving about the downfall of America because of unrequited consumerism. I plan to expand that site slowly, first with photos and more information about my gripes, but eventually with a message board / forum where folks can join, log in, and post about their own product gripes.

Both of these sites are powered by the WordPress blogging software. I really like WordPress because it gives you both the capability of a CMS, and a blog all in one. You can have blog entries that scroll away as blog entries usually do, and also have "pages" which are always available right there from your menu. Having these pages here in English using WordPress also helps me get used to using word press, which I plan to also install in Russian and hook into my site yagovo.ru (one of my more ambitious and long-term projects where I hope to someday provide free blogging to Russians.)

As a side-line, I'm going to be shortly incorporating google ad-words into my blogs (all of them) starting with explodingplate.com once I've got some more content up there. Currently I've got three or four products slated to grumble about and am just waiting for my camera battery to recharge so I can get some photos off my camera.

Cheers!
Basil

Bad Times for the Entertainment Industry: A Great Day for Bloggers

Let's face it. The entertainment industry is going to suffer on account of the Writer's Strike (Wow! has anyone ever seen so much creativity all in one place!), and now the Broadway Stagehand Strike. I don't really know how much it will suffer at the passing of Norm Mailer (I've over a thousand books in my personal library and not one of his - never read him!) So, what does everyone do now for entertainment?

Browse the Web!

(I reckon a few of them will go out to eat dinner at a fine restaurant too.)

So, I figure it is a great day for bloggers. Folks will have nothing to read for a while (ya, right!) and so they are going to be meandering the dark catacombs and sunny glades of blogger, wordpress, lifejournal, and myspace.

I guess maybe my point is: who cares that the Hollywood writers are on strike? Is the world going to suffer if all those couch potatoes out there have to watch re-runs for a few weeks? I think not. Is the world going to suffer of a hand full of movies are released later than planned? Again: I think not.

I do feel mildly sorry for the Hollywood and/or New York writer: mostly because they have to live in Hollywood and/or New York where the cost of living is 100 times what it is anywhere else in the country. But, in a way, I don't feel sorry for them too: because it was their choice.

And, what I think the Hollywood types don't recognize is that everybody is suffering these days. The economy is going to hell. Costs are going up and people are making less and less money. (I haven't gotten a salary increase in two years now, and I'm busting my butt to make my company profitable.)

So, I guess I change my mind. I don't feel sorry for them.

Enjoy cyberspace!

Cheers!
Basil