09:39 – Kit sales are running at three a day, which is a decent rate for early August. Later in the month and into September, that rate should jump significantly.
Barbara and I joined Sam’s Club yesterday. We ended up getting a Sam’s Club Mastercard because that’s the only credit card they accept for purchases. We didn’t get much on our first trip, just a few cases of canned goods, a couple gallons of orange juice, and some frozen food. That, and a four gallon (~15 liter) carboy of spring water for $4. As I told Barbara, I didn’t care about the water itself. I wanted that heavy-duty PET carboy for making up solutions. I can buy similar carboys from one of our wholesalers, but they cost about $15 not including shipping.
11:48 – I was a bit surprised to see that Sam’s Club carries a huge variety of long-term storable food. Costco also carries long-term storable food, but a much smaller selection. I’ll buy a few items from them, but not many. Their dry goods (rice, flour, sugar, pasta, etc.) in #10 cans are considerably more expensive than the same thing at the LDS store, and I have no interest in freeze-dried stuff.
As with all long-term storage food, the stated shelf lives are entirely imaginary. Here’s one example: Augason Farms Iodized Salt Pail – 50 lbs. The shelf life is specified as “up to 30 years when sealed, up to 1 year under ideal conditions when opened”. Geez. They could just as easily have said 300 years, or 3000. Salt doesn’t spoil, not in one year, not in 30 years. Never. Sure, it may cake, but who cares? It never becomes dangerous to eat, and it never loses its nutritional value. Thousand-year-old salt is still salt. And $0.80 per pound is a lot to pay for table salt. I picked up several 4-pound boxes of Morton iodized table salt at Sam’s yesterday for $0.99 each. I’ll transfer it to clean, dry 2-liter soda bottles, where it will remain good for the next several thousand years.
None of the long-term food vendors even pretend to have any scientific basis for their shelf-life claims. All of them simply parrot other vendors’ claims. One vendor sometime in the distant past estimated that, for example, a #10 can of table sugar should still be good after 30 years, so now everyone claims more or less the same shelf life. Some of the “data” are actually funny. For example, some vendors specify ideal storage relative humidity. News flash, folks. The food in that #10 can has no clue what the humidity is outside the can. But moisture and humidity are Bad Things, so I guess they expect customers to believe that storing those cans at 30% or 50% RH will cut down on shelf life. Geez.
They also have an odd way of looking at expected shelf life depending on the type of container. The same item may be available in both #10 cans and aluminized Mylar (“foil”) pouches, with the shelf life of the cans specified as 25 years versus only 18 months for the pouches. Another news flash, folks. Aluminized Mylar provides essentially the same level of protection against light, moisture, and oxygen as the #10 can. Now, it’s true that the pouch is much more likely to have a defective seal than the can, and it’s also true that rodents are much more likely to gnaw through the pouch than the can, but the fact remains that both forms of packaging should provide a very similar shelf life assuming the seal is not compromised. If it is, all bets are off, but it’s an all-or-nothing situation: if the seal is good, the food inside the pouch should last as long as the food in the #10 can. If the seal is compromised, the food inside either the can or the pouch can no longer be trusted. So what’s with the 18-month versus 25-year shelf life estimates?
[snip] a Sam’s Club Mastercard because that’s the only credit card they accept for purchases. [snip]
Interesting. The Sam’s Club here has always taken Discover, as well as checks and coin of the realm.
Sorry, that’s true. They did mention that they took Discover, but all Barbara and I have is AmEx and Visa.
Sam’s Club will also accept debit cards be it VISA or M/C, but not a VISA credit card.
Carboy…
I once bought a keychain flashlight at our local Dollar Tree for, you guessed it, a dollar – plus tax of course. I needed two of its three button batteries, and they cost more than $2 each locally. I doubt these no-name cheapies were any worse for my intended application! Of course, the flashlight was junk, but I threw it away.
Sam’s recently changed from their branded Discover to Mastercard. I’m waiting for my replacement in the mail.
I thought Discover had the best cash back program of any. I do not have one, because they are worthless overseas, so we let ours lapse. I have never bothered to reactivate it, but I probably should.
The nearest Sam’s Club and Costco are both really too far away for joining to make sense for me. Aside from the fact that I am purposely not accumulating stuff at Tiny House, as my intention is a move sometime within the next calendar year.
My experience replacing WinXP SP3 with Mint 17 continues. It is very frustrating, because all the crappy little annoyances we had with Win2k are back with a vengeance. Evolution crashes whenever I try to add a folder. It actually adds the folder, but simultaneously crashes and disappears. LibreOffice freezes frequently in both Writer and Calc. Seems to be OS related; others running non-Deb-derived distributions have no problems with the freezing. The audio continues to sometimes run at 48k and at other times 44.1k. This change can happen from one day to the next, even when I am gone and do not touch the computer from one audio use to the next. The mouse — even on the slowest, least sensitive settings, is like throwing darts — maybe I can click on the very spot I need to mark, maybe not.
Although I really like Mint, next experiment will be to try out CentOS, but that will be on another computer. If that solves the weirdnesses, then I might stick with Linux, but although Linux is now usable for my purposes — and I need it for Cinelerra — there is no way it is as user-capable as Windows. Not even close.
BTW, regarding the LibreOffice vs Apache OpenOffice, due to copyright issues, LO is free to incorporate advancements from Apache, but Apache cannot include new features implemented by LO. So LO is the distribution to stick with. It will be advancing, while OO will be stuck where it was when Oracle gave OO to Apache.
Please don’t misinterpret, I am not anti-Roman Catholic and pro-other cults. It is just that knowledge of the criminality is more easily obtainable.
For example, Cardinal Roger Mahoney of the LA diocese is now well known as harboring pedophile predator priests. Having been made aware of their crimes he sends them for “cure” at a church facility in New Mexico. After they have been “cured” he reassigns them to other church institutions where they have opportunity to come into contact with preteen boys and perpetrate pedophile predator crimes again. What does the cardinal not understand about recidivism? Does he really think that there is a “cure” for this mental disorder?
OK, now we have a new Pope who claims to be against this criminal behavior of his pedophile predator priests and he is going to stop it. But no word whatsoever of specific acts to be taken. Is this just another example of Papal Pontification, yapity-yap and now walk the walk?
Well, here is that which I suggest if I were the Pompous Pious Pope:
1. Excommunicate Cardinal Roger Mahoney,
2. Sentence him to everlasting afterlife in Hades,
3. Prevent him from entering Heaven,
4. Tweet St. Peter to not allow him through the Pearly Gates into Heaven,
5. SMS text to St. Peter that he should send twitter to Lucifer to come and get deceased Cardinal Mahony and personally, step-by-step, accompany him to Hades.
The “cure” I have in mind for these priests involves a visit to the surgeon.
“…next experiment will be to try out CentOS, but that will be on another computer.”
You will probably find that your problems with the things you’re trying to do will multiply; CentOS is not particularly designed for all that; like Scientific Linux and their upstream vendor, RHEL, they’re mainly for racked, enterprise-level servers. Although before I left, IBM had put together a consumer/user-oriented, proprietary RH o.s. for us peons to use on our laptops, which was fine for there, but the manglers refused to use it and stuck with Windows; they can’t live without Windows and Excel spreadsheets and Outlook.
Quite frankly, Mr. Chuck; if you can’t make Mint do all the things you need to do, I’d go back to Windows and be done with the hassle, and call it a real good try but no joy at the end of the day.
“… So LO is the distribution to stick with. It will be advancing, while OO will be stuck where it was when Oracle gave OO to Apache.”
Indeed. I use both LO and Windows Office interchangeably here; wife uses only the latter.
“It is just that knowledge of the criminality is more easily obtainable.”
Indeed, and we’ve gone into the reasons for this here before. Also before this, I’ve said many times I’d personally have no issue with kicking the chairs out from pedophile clergy and their enablers in the Church hierarchy, Mahony being a prime example. The current Pope has met with abuse victims and my information is that they’re rooting out recidivist clergy worldwide now and have been doing so since Pope Benedict. The media won’t report this, of course. So it didn’t happen, amirite?
While also bearing in mind, as I’ve said before, the clerical child abuse cases are a very tiny minority of the entire body of sexual misconduct cases, most of which were/are simply encounters between homosexual clergy and homosexual men, many if not most, consensual. The media won’t report this, either; so the impression conveyed over the past decades is that almost all Catholic priests are sexual predators of children and people tend to hold onto this impression and then repeat it loudly and vociferously, almost as though Lucifer himself was standing in back of them and making their gums flap.
I was a bit surprised to see that Sam’s Club carries a huge variety of long-term storable food. Costco also carries long-term storable food, but a much smaller selection.
That’s because Sam’s does significant business to the food service industry. I have seen chefs there buying canned items and staples. They also cater to vending machine operators and Stop-n-Robs by stocking large multipacks of chips, gum, and candy.
Costco’s market is yuppies.
I thought Discover had the best cash back program of any.
Perhaps. But they are, in my opinion, rat bastards. They sent my mom to collection without warning when my dad died. The account was current – I know because I was writing the checks as we settled the estate. Out of the blue, collection calls started. Our estate attorney tied them up in knots with documentation requests for over a year and they gave up. A friend has a software firm that sells a package for attorneys that do collections work and he knew of the firm. The firm that was doing the collection calls is not highly regarded among peers. And this is typical of Discover.
My wife and I cancelled our account after this.
Well, Slim’s and OFD’s cure might work if there actually were an afterlife. But seeing as how all existence and consciousness ends with the last breath, only Greg’s has any chance of preventing recidivism.
The media isn’t going to report masses of priests being defrocked and arrested for child raping and other sex crimes? Get real.
This is what I mean by not behaving or thinking rationally. With all of the evidence saying you’re wrong, you persist in believing something that is demonstrably not true.
I’m surprised that the feds haven’t filed RICO charges against the RCC. It’s certainly more corrupt than organized crime or labor unions.
“Computer Programming Is a Trade; Let’s Act Like It”:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/computer-programming-is-a-trade-lets-act-like-it-1407109947
Except that trades are usually paid hourly. Maybe management would think twice about working their IT staff 60-80 hrs/wk if they had to pay overtime.
“…masses of priests being defrocked and arrested for child raping and other sex crimes?”
Except there simply *aren’t* “masses of priests” guilty of that stuff; there would only be *masses* defrocked and arrested if they decided to go after adult homosexual encounters as well, probably ten percent of the clergy populations in urban locations (and that includes other denominations and Jewish clergy as well), far higher than in the general population.
“With all of the evidence saying you’re wrong, you persist in believing something that is demonstrably not true.”
And back at ya; where are you getting all this “evidence” that there were/are “masses of priests” engaging in child sexual abuse??? From the MSM and the internet??? Good call. They can always be relied upon for truth, can they not? When so much else they report has been found to be in error and/or maliciously false. In my experience, those who focus all their attention and outrage on the tiny percentage of Roman Catholic clergy (remember, a *billion* Roman Catholics worldwide, and proportionately that many more priests?) guilty of this behavior have some other ax to grind.
I don’t see where that makes me irrational, a standard accusation of the old Soviet regime for its dissidents and religious; I’m far from the only person out here who questions the MSM reports of clergy abuse; and once again, cui bono? One word: lawyers.
“Maybe management would think twice about working their IT staff 60-80 hrs/wk if they had to pay overtime.”
Yeah. Some of us have been through this battle numerous times; at my last gig we had to fight to get O.T. pay and they were grudging and nasty about giving in, and only did so because Vermont state law mandated it; our NY brethren were not so rewarded. Then, as I’ve seen happen many times before, O.T. work disappeared. Amazing, ain’t it?
So, my sources include thousands of independent news reports, court cases, statements from law enforcement, statements from victims and witnesses, etc. etc. Your one source is the accused organization itself, and more particularly the management of that organization, which has been complicit in the crimes. Every official of that church, from the lowliest priest through the pope himself, is guilty of covering up these hideous crimes, if not actively engaging in them themselves. All of them, without exception, knew or should have known what was going on. Even The Who’s deaf, dumb, and blind kid would have known. That means that every single official of the RCC belongs in prison, at the very least.
Wow, I don’t know where to begin on what is wrong with that paragraph.
You’ve personally gone through “…thousands of independent news reports, court cases, statements from law enforcement, statements from victims and witnesses, etc. etc.” in order to be able, in good faith (pardon the irony) keep making the statements you do, and not just skimmed through summaries and MSM distillations of same? Bearing in mind again, we’re discussing an organization of a billion adherents with a small minority of clergy and bureaucracy to *begin with*, (the parochial school system in NYC managed its huge operation with 24 staff members, most of them civilians, while the NYC school system ran with a cast of many thousands and did a crappier job of it, too), and a minority *again* of clergy who are known to have engaged in improper sexual activities, and yet another minority of *them* who were child abusers.
Yes, the bureaucracy and the hierarchy were complicit and I’d hang them as well, like I’ve said here many times by now.
“Every official of that church, from the lowliest priest through the pope himself, is guilty of covering up these hideous crimes, if not actively engaging in them themselves.”
No. Simply not true by any stretch of moral or legal imagination. And begins to seem more like a witch-hunt.
“All of them, without exception, knew or should have known what was going on.”
No. Did all of our soldiers, from the lowliest boot recruit in training to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff know what was going on, or should they have known what was going on at Mai Lai? Are the bank tellers at the local Bank of America branch complicit in what their CEO and CFO have done? Was a VC sapper outside Bien Hoa complicit in the slaughters at Hue?
“That means that every single official of the RCC belongs in prison, at the very least.”
Fine. We’ll lock them up along with the officials in the Protestant denominations, the Jewish synagogues, and the public school systems. We’ll also have the Feebies set up an office in each muslim country to identify, investigate and prosecute the sexual abuses of children in those places by adherent clergy and members of that religion.
And this also reminds me of the series of child abuse cases and accusations that were taking place around the country years ago that included accusations of Satanic rituals, kidnappings by flying saucers, and fantastical descriptions of said abuse that were physically impossible, and all of it was found to be utter bullshit yet lives were ruined in the ensuing *witch-hunts,” which this business with the Roman Catholic Church has become and the only people who profit by it are lawyers and real estate developers.
There is no real justice on this earth for the actual child victims and we would do well to remember that and know that mass hangings and burnings of everyone who was ever a member of whatever organization’s officialdom is simply a witch-hunt that makes us feel good temporarily, like we’ve actually accomplished something. I support capital justice for child abusers but I also want to make sure we get the right bastards, not simply grab everyone with a collar.
I get my information from the DA, either State of Ca or County of LA. When allegations of the crime committed by the pedophile pederast predator priest (pppp), the DA attempted to subpoena records of the conversations between the pppp and Cardinal Mahoney.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/church-officials-shielded-pedophile-priests-records-article-1.1245005
Well, the RCC spent thousands of dollars from member contributions on lawyer fees to delay submission. It worked beyond the statute of limitations which kept the pppp out of the CA slammer, but some judge finally decreed the submission and all was known.
However, by not doing the right thing and turning the pppp into the authorities when he first found out the pppp avoided arrest, subsequent incarceration and went out to repeat his crime. Now, how is the Cardinal not an equally guilty co-conspirator of those subsequent crimes and should he not be penalized for such? Is it not appropriate that the Pious Pompous Popus (PPP) subject the Criminal Catholic Church Cardinal (CCCC) Mahoney to an eternal afterlife in Hades sitting at the left hand of Lucifer?
A couple of articles on priest abuse in the Catholic Church. Draw your own conclusions:
Six important points you don’t hear about regarding clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church
Catholic sex abuse facts :: Fast Facts
Sorry, I find it hard to accept that which, conjectural speculation, the apologists slide, slip and slime out.
Above, that which I quote is from the records finally delivered by the church under subpoena from the court. There is no fuzz on that which was written by the Cardinal as he acknowledged the guilt of his underling.
How about the absurdity: “….most cases are very old…..from the ’60s and ’70s”?
Of course, and in several decades, all current cases will finally come out. That is the result of Cardinal Mahoney and the rest spending millions on lawyer fees to fight off the courts and subpoenas.
Sorry, MrAtoz, those links won’t fly:
“Thomas Plante, PhD, ABPP, is the Augustin Cardinal Bea, SJ University Professor at Santa Clara University…”
Uh-oh, some kinda Jesuit stormtrooper here…
See, this is from the very people who supported and enabled the hideous abuse of young children so can safely be excluded from any objective examination of facts outside our so-truthful police and prosecutor reports and the mainstream media. Funny how they’re so objective and truthful in cases involving Catholic clergy abuses but not so much in other areas, like, say, global warming, or the situation in the Middle East, or the economy…
I’d gladly hang Mahoney and the priest involved but clearly that hasn’t happened and apparently isn’t going to happen. So I’m to now disavow the entire billion-member Church and call for the arrest and imprisonment of all clergy and the evidently forgotten or overlooked civilian bureaucracy.
But if one already has a major gripe about the Catholic Church it’s just that much easier to believe without question whatever the conventional wisdom hath decreed to be the truth over the past forty years. In any case, the clearly awful few cases of genuine clerical sexual abuse of children years ago pales utterly beside the holocaust of abortion and euthanasia in the modern industrialized West over those same forty years. We’re as much a culture of slavery and death now as the hadjis, but we have the firepower, the money and the tee-vees, so we’re cool and nobody wants to talk about any of that anyway. It ain’t a real human life in there, whether in the womb, or in advanced and senile old age, so why not just eliminate the inconvenience, oddly reminiscent of the Nazis programs in the 1930s and 40s. And eugenics programs in this country.
It’s a slippery slope.
Geez, according to the SJ guy 4% of priests are pedophiles and 80% of the molestation by priests is of children who have passed puberty. So, according to the SJ guy’s numbers, 20% of priests are molesters. When you consider that his natural bias would be to minimize things as much as possible, the actual number must be higher. What, twice his estimate, three times? So are 60% of priests molesters, or only 40%?
The two sides of this issue clearly are never going to find common ground, so the obvious solution is to put me in charge of a modern inquisition. But, like all modern special prosecutors (and constitutional conventions, for that matter), I won’t feel any obligation to limit myself to the original scope of the inquisition. No, I can see writing an updated Malleus Malificarum. Call it the Malleus Dumbassicarum, the Hammer of the Stupid. Currently accepting applications for hooded assistants.
I’d like to see more rigorous action taken by the Church hierarchy, and to also see known pedophile clergy defrocked, arrested, tried and executed accordingly, along with the higher level manager types who blew it off and/or enabled it. I’d also dump the active homosexual clergy and those who can’t keep their pants zipped for women, as we have some of those as well.
And I’d like to see similar focused attention paid to the clergy and incidents of abuse identified in other Christian denominations and in the Jewish sectors; couple that up with the abuse visited upon muslim women and girls by the men in their families here in the West. Or are we just gonna ignore all that stuff and let it ride in favor of hounding Catholic priests in a continuing witch-hunt?
Update the Malleus and bring it on.
Meanwhile I’m pretty copacetic with my parish priest and deacons, the retired Pope, and the blessed Triple-A of Church Doctors, Augustine, Aquinas and Anselm. If they are for us, who can be against us?
Geez, according to the SJ guy 4% of priests are pedophiles and 80% of the molestation by priests is of children who have passed puberty.
My own conclusion is that priest molestation rate is no more than the male genpop and maybe less than teachers. Hard to say without collecting and crunching the numbers. Why come down so hard on priests and not your neighbors?
Your 20% calculation doesn’t jive with me. The 4% includes all categories in the article. Minors pre/post puberty.
“Why come down so hard on priests and not your neighbors?”
Because priests ran the Inquisition and the Crusades and they’re ‘out there somewhere,’ I’m guessing there aren’t many Roman Catholics in North Carolina and other southern states. And neighbors are right there; probably better not to know what goes on behind their closed doors, and none of your beeswax anyway; Mrs. OFD and I have a pretty good idea what goes on behind a lot of closed doors over the decades among the male and female genpop and it utterly dwarfs the number of priests doing bad things.
And because the MSM and Conventional Wisdom as promulgated by them, the courts, the police, the lawyers, and academia, all proven trustworthy sources, amirite? dictates that it’s all being done by Roman Catholic priests, always and everywhere excused and enabled by their evil masters in the hierarchy. But nary a word about the high incidence of homosexual clergy, especially among Catholic and mainstream Protestant clergy in the country’s urban parishes. See, that’s OK, and to even mention it tars one as a homophobe.
If that was directed at me, the targets of my Inquisition are going to be all the stupid and scummy people in the world — not limited to Americans, nor sexual abusers of the less powerful, and certaintly not limited to RC priests. Nope, the Malleus Dumbassicarum will have lists of the stigmata of stupid people, and of scumbags. It’ll also have suggestions for dealing with these dumbasses. (Though the suggestions will all boil down to “hit them with a hammer”.)
lol NC banned same sex marriage by amending their constitution. Bunch of backward hicks that just fell off the turnip truck. Sorry if I offended some hicks. Or turnips.
Is it possible to offend them?
New Mexican restaurant down in Bloomington, where I ate over the previous weekend, mixes applesauce in with the salsa. Now my kids do not like that at all, but all I can say is I’m addicted. Ran out of chips, but salsa and applesauce tastes great without them!
“If that was directed at me…”
Nope. No particular direction, just all of us in general.
“NC banned same sex marriage by amending their constitution.”
I happen to think that when governments and “lawmakers” do stuff like this, they only hurt themselves and cause more problems than they solve. This creates phony martyrs and yet another swarm of professional grievance whores and pimps. I further believe that the State should keep its damned mitts out of marriages between people altogether anyway. Licensing us like dogs and livestock. If someone wants to marry a bridge (real-life case) or someone of the same gender or their pet baboon, go for it, I couldn’t possibly care less except in amused contempt for their insane self-hatred. If a man and woman wish to be married in the Roman Catholic or Methodist church or a synagogue, then they will have to abide by the rules of that religious body to which they voluntarily adhere. I won’t tell two homosexuals not to marry (except not in my Church) and I do not want them coming to my Church and demanding that we marry them there. Period. That ain’t gonna happen. Ever.
“Is it possible to offend them?”
Who? Hicks, or turnips? What’ve ya got against turnips?
“… mixes applesauce in with the salsa.”
Sacrilege! Blasphemy!
Speaking of offending, in order not to do that to anyone, Oxford U. is now accepting the title “Mx.” for androgynous, anonymous, or unknown genders. I cannot wait to address all my letters henceforth: Dear Mx. That Mr., Miss, Mrs., and Ms. stuff was getting so confusing.
The founders and first several centuries of faculty and students at Oxford must be spinning in their graves. What utter inane nonsense. They have far too much time on their hands. Are they teaching STEM subjects? Advanced literary and historical topics? No? Close them down.
When will all this garbage finally cease?
When will all this garbage finally cease?
For you? When you are worm food.
For everyone else that continues to stay vertical? It won’t.
The food in that #10 can has no clue what the humidity is outside the can.
The can is subject to the humidity; over time that can damage the can.
Aluminized Mylar provides essentially the same level of protection against light, moisture, and oxygen as the #10 can.
From what I can gather that is true of aluminium foil laminates but not true of metalized films. I’d be hard put to tell one from the other myself.
Metalized films (or metallised films) are polymer films coated with a thin layer of metal, usually aluminium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallised_film
It was thought that metallised films would become a replacement for aluminium foil laminates, but current films still cannot match the barrier properties of foil. Some very high barrier metallised films are available using EVOH, but are not yet cost effective against foil laminates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallised_film#Properties
Both metallised PET and PP have replaced foil laminates for products such as snack foods, coffee and candy, which do not require the superior barrier of aluminium foil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallised_film#Packaging
@Roy Harvey
Steel cans don’t rust in humidity levels that are comfortable for people. Actually, steel doesn’t rust in the presence of even liquid water and oxygen. It requires something to catalyze the process, most commonly salt (which is why cars rust near the ocean or in areas that put down salt in the winter, and also why firearms rust where they’ve been touched by fingers.)
Yes, the aluminized Mylar that I’m referring to is not the thin stuff that they make balloons and snack food bags out of. I’m talking about the much thicker stuff that’s a layer of aluminum foil bonded to Mylar.
Greetings. Rumours of my demise were a trifle overstated. The state of my bank balance and computer, not so much.
On to comment on priests, paedophiles, paederasty, popes, priggers, piemen, pimps, pigs, poodles, and the poor.
It may be true that priests are less likely to be paedophile offenders than are others.
However, they do seem likely to cause more paedophile offences than do others.
Reason? Repeat offences, and opportunities for same.
So? We need to identify them, HALT matters while we try them and prove the offences if any, then STOP the offenders.
There are other classes of people who also carry out paedophile offences (and that’s a misnomer if ever was. What would be the proper suffix to denote child hate? Not “phobe”, which means “fear”, but what?)
Anyway, the RCC is not doing its social duty, and calling a halt to proceedings.
Nor, as it happens, are other hierarchical organisations, such as the Anglican/Episcopal Church, child welfare and juvenile justice organisations, and possibly Coptic Churches. I think the failure is endemic in the structure and flow of authority, responsibility and knowledge within such organisations. It has to be over-ruled by specific rules addressing the specific situation, and general rules for the future addressing the type of situation.
There need to be rules anchored in the concepts of personal integrity, professional probity, social justice, and the concepts of misfeasance, malfeasance, and nonfeasance.
Other people in other organisations (other ministers in other churches, teachers, others) are less likely to be placed in such positions, and less likely to be repeat offenders. However, they should of course be held to the same standards.
Equally important, since justice must be equal for all, then they must be protected against false accusations. This also peripherally includes spouses, mostly male, accused in child custody cases. We all know people and/or know of people whose lives have been ruined by false accusations. Such accusations have horrific results even if “unproven”. They can be even worse if they go through a false process of pro forma “proof” based on false evidence such as implanted memories, or even outright lies and falsified evidence. Faced with biased judges, some people are even convicted directly against evidence, or against physical and biological possibilities (really, dear? The minister? An electric drill? That must have been awful! It must have done terrible damage! No scars at all? Well, I’m so happy for you, dear. Yes, I’m sure you’re right, and we can’t let people like that get away with things like that. [Happened to a friend of the family. Reversed on appeal, but he’d spent several years in gaol by then.])
Yes, the courts down in MA and other places sent people to prison for many years based on wild-ass accusations totally reminiscent of Salem in 1692.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/addiction-in-society/201001/martha-coakley-and-modern-witch-hunting-ritual-child-sexual-abuse
Some elements of computer programming resemble a trade, but I think it more closely resembles a profession. A tradesman like a plumber or electrician has very important skills, and I won’t dispute that. But there is a much wider difference between the work of a good programmer and the work of a great programmer compared to the work of a good electrician and a great electrician.
No question in my mind that computer programming is a creative art, just as making TV programs and movies is. In plumbing, there is only one way to do 99% of jobs; in creative, there are many different approaches and outcomes. No one may see the art if the programming is hidden, like crunching accounting figures, but when programming requires human interface, it is very much visible. And even when it is hidden, other creators can understand the artful elegance (or lack thereof) of the code.
Artists do not usually work by the hour — I worked for salary in TV and worked by the week with a 3 week minimum doing freelance after I left fulltime TV gigs. If you can get paid by the hour for doing art, that will be more lucrative. Nobody I know has that gig in video or movie producing. Best one can do is quit at 5:00 to keep from diluting the hourly rate.