TS BN rules discussion

Diane answered here on my previous post “TS Blog Network rules“. She also updated TS BN rules site and asked me to take another look on it and comment in details what points would be unclear, etc.

Diane also wrote:
“Zalbarath says he finds my draft page Theistic Satanism Blog Network: Tag topicality and other rules and guidelines to be more confusing than the rules for my Yahoo groups.

This surprises me. Zalbarath, are you sure that the blog network rules are actually more complicated, or are you just disappointed that they aren’t several orders of magnitude simpler? Offhand, I don’t see any ways that the blog network rules are more complicated than the Yahoo group rules, except that some issues are discussed as gray areas rather than as absolute black-and-white prohibitions.”

Well, I thought it through, red your updated rules site and I agree now that they’re not more complicated per se but rather more complicated than I expected.

TS Blog Network rules

Diane provided link to proposed rules page of her Theistic Satanism Network:
http://www.theisticsatanism.com/net/rules.html
I tried to red it very carefully but after a while I gave up. Is it a joke?!

Theistic Satanism Blog Network test-phase on WordPress

Diane’s Theistic Satanism Blog Network code is not fully yet but apparently in stage were we’re able to test it in practice. Diane prepared special site http://www.theisticsatanism.com/net/ were one can find “pages containing automatically updated lists of recent posts with particular tags on member blogs, one page for each of five special tags”. Now I should experiment with these tags and check does it function properly. I match this post with two tags “Theistic Satanists only” and “Satanists and Pagans and occultists only” and see where it brings me.

Homosexualism in nature

Thanks to darwinian remiix journal I noticed museum exhibition devoted to homosexuality among animals.
On LiveScience page we find information:
“Homosexuality has been documented in almost 500 species of animals, signaling that sexual preference is predetermined. Considered the closest living relative to humans, bonobos are not shy about seeking sexual pleasure. Nearly all of these peace-loving apes are bisexual and often resolve conflict by the “make love, not war” principle. They copulate frequently, scream out in delight while doing so, and often engage in homosexual activities. About two thirds of the homosexual activities are amongst females.”
Those facts are nothing new but surprisingly big number of people have never heard of it or are deaf on such informations. I talked once with Christian fundie about that and his reaction was something like that: “What? Never heard of it”. I asked: “Haven’t you see even two male dogs together”? His answer: “What? No, never. And actually that is not true with homosexuality. Science is just one big fraud”…
Well, by such opinion there was no point of discussing it further. It’s hard to believe that people can think that way (read: to be so limited, stupid) but maybe it’s some kind of US specialty among fundies or like overweight people, fluffizm and so on… At least in area/environment I live, such statements would be not just faux pax but complete disgrace. It’s true that science often is overestimated and has many disadvantages but not to such degree! It shows complete lack of understanding what science in general is. Alas many scientists seem to forget it too…
Anyway, back to this fascinating exhibition:
“A first-ever museum display, “Against Nature?,” which opened last month at the University of Oslo’s Natural History Museum in Norway, presents 51 species of animals exhibiting homosexuality.”
More to it and other related sources is to be found on the site:

Gay animals out of the closet?

Polygamy

Today I red an article in Weekend Magazin about polygamy (probably reprint from Kronen Zeitung). There was described a case in which 21 old man from Kosovo got married with his 25 year old Austrian girlfriend. It wouldn’t be anything unusual despite the fact he already had a wife in Kosovo. After some time and baby from second marriage health insurance agency found out about his first wife and he was charged of bigamy. Decision of the court he got suspended sentence of three months of jail (in the worst case he could be convicted of 3 years of imprisonment).
Now if his second wife was not informed and agreed with the presence of first one then it’s a case of fraud and the second bond should be invalidated. But what I find strange are penalties just from the fact of having two “legal” partners. Of course it’s nothing new, the law was always treated it as a crime but who has sacrificed it a second thought? Nowadays with accepting homosexual marriages in many countries such law seems to be at least backward and obsolete. But who cares about it? If we would ask people in European countries and United States about who would want to have or have need for more than one legal partner then very likely we would obtain very little percent of positive answers. Our cultural conditioning makes that we can’t even imagine polygamous model as functioning in our life. People usually realize that there are polygamous cultures but most of them is not aware that well working family models are far more various and common beyond main stream of Judeo-Christian cultures. They assume that standard monogamous model (for many with mom and dad) is the only right one. There is no bigger organized groups which would press governments to change the law how is it in case of homosexuals. We don’t realize how deep Christian culture influenced the law and culture. If we want it or not we were raised in such culture and many patterns were taken unaware as a norm and we even don’t think it could be something wrong with them. Most people simply assume that their way is the best way. Is it really?

Political manifest

In parallel blog on WP created for the same purposes Li Vickson expressed very adequate thoughts about control and self responsibility. That inspired me to specify some main points.
To be clear for all readers of my satanic notes I’m for personal freedom and self responsibility. Sounds nice and easy but what that exactly means? That everyone has control over OWN life and has right to do with it with he/she wishes to. That makes big difference and implicates many things. It would be pointless to list them here. Instead I will present very shortly a few chosen ideas what I politically stand for:
I’m for abortion rights.
I’m for euthanasia – free choice.
I’m for homosexual marriages.
I’m for possibility of adoption for homosexual couples.
I realize that full independence of governments from religious beliefs is utopian idea but I’d be glad to see them free of influence of any major religion.

[Later] I tried to split this entry to visible part and linked one and used proper tool but it just deleted (!!!) second part which I wrote here and I don’t see possibility to retrieve it! So this entry is not complete!

Subjects division

Presently I have three blogs on three different domains: LiveJournal, WordPress and Blogger. All three where set as response to Diane’s experiment with idea of Theistic Satanism Blog Network. While we’re still waiting till everything needed will be prepared I tried out how things works. I recognized quickly that LJ with great privacy tools is perfect place for more close private magickal journal and decided to keep it outside TS Blog Network. For purpose of the last I will use WordPress and Blogger. At the moment I’m tending WP to be more public, politic-social medium and Blogger for more loose subjects but exactly which topics and where will be placed will be sure after a time of functioning of TS Blog Network.
Now I wonder if it will work for me since opposite to Diane I don’t like much to deal with politic or any social problems. The strongest influence I have on my own, close environment. I’m working better when it comes into more personal relation with particular person. I don’t feel well in group. It’s more natural to me to synchronize, sense one person at a time so public activity in Internet isn’t simply my thing. But maybe I will discover some new things about me? Who knows?

Polish right wing goverment

If someone is interested in what religious right wing in different countries is up to should look closer to present polish government. Maybe Poland is not so important on international political scene but there is much spicy news. I’m not sure how much of it is available in English.

Just to mention some more or less recent ideas:

- “Improving” of antiabortion law in a way to delete all exceptions where abortion is allowed.

- Making Jesus as the right king of Poland (sic!)

- Once again “small improvement” of paragraph to prohibit promotion of Satanism and homosexual way of life (understood as complete ban of any public friendly statements on that topics and throwing homosexuals out of areas where they could have contact with kids or teenagers).

Luckily those blatantly stupid and shocking attempts where fruitless (not counting the last one which is still in progress) but what is very disturbing that religious right wing has now more power than ever and no one is really sure if some of mentioned above “ideas” could not become finally horrible reality.

I think there should be at least some English news about recent polish government actions. Below are examples I quickly googled:

http://www.gay.eu/artikel.html?documentid=1798

http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2005/poland.htm

http://www.kampania.org.pl/english.php

Now one can consider if so common place right wing domination or growth of its importance in various countries at the same time is just freaky coincidence or it could be influence of conflict with Islamic extremists?

Time to let go and move further

After spending here more time than indented I wasn’t able to figure it out how some options on WordPress work. I can’t use tags, Tag Surfer doesn’t have surfing option, Blog Surfer has but not working one… Those options ate too much my time and frustration. I cannot devote more time so I concentrate on other blog possibilities.
So what happened today? I finally got better general understanding of Botanical Nomenclature Code. After getting acquainted with such basic terms like: holotype, paratype, syntype, lectotpe, isotype, effective and valid publication and a lot more I can deep further in that complex topic. I have also one article to elaborate. I have about three weeks for it from now on but since Statistic classes begin in a few days I must first force myself into dipping in that so important and needed but very ungrateful topic.

Doubts

I checked privacy and protection options and to my disappointment WordPress seems not to poses such great privacy tools like LiveJournal. I can protect chosen posts or the whole blog with the password but such solution is not so comfortable like on LJ. I must admit that the whole WordPress’ layout appears to be more serious, professional in comparison to LJ and hence more attractive, at least for me. Site management is also more intuitive but the lack of many similar options like discovered lately on LJ makes the latter more practical for my purposes. I can’t imagine how could function here any bigger or more popular community (at least presently) on the base of this tags. Till now I cannot figure it out how it works. I wrote proper tag, clicked add, checked “Theistic Satanism” category and then published my post but at the end it landed on my blog. I can chose this tagged category from the link but it’s always a part of my blog and not site like Diane has posted. Apparently I don’t understand something. Maybe blog specialized portals are new to me but there are thousands of people who are even less acquainted with Interned than I’m and have problems even with Yahoo. How in such cases we could promote Theistic Satanism on such not-user friendly place? If I need many hours (for Yahoo it was a matter of few minutes to get started with some group – a huge deciding factor) to get familiar with it to post anything I couldn’t imagine that people will be invading it in bigger count. Of course attracting of intelligent and mature people is very important and such places like WordPress would be perfect for it but there must be some balance between promoting Theistic Satanism (or knowledge about it) to wider publicity and attracting less common but mature and intelligent persons. Yahoo seems to be perfect middle solution, MySpace and WordPress are like two opposite fronts in such case. How it will end? Time will tell.