Legalism & facebook

Recently, I have seen groups on facebook hoping for the death of President Obama. That's right, people who would never actively do anything to harm or support harming the president are joining facebook groups hoping, praying, and/or seeking the president's death.

They don't necessarily advocate assassination, but they certainly aren't against a rapidly progressing disease.

Please, people, how gross is that?

So yesterday, I asked this question on my status:

I am reading posts advocating death and hate and other posts advocating silencing those voices. Question: Unless there in something in the "Terms of Service," to the contrary; does facebook have the right to censor any voice? Yes, even voices that spew ignorance (I'll let you decide what accounts for ignorance if you'll allow me the same.).

Well, folks were not all pleased with my question, for the most obvious reasons. Later in the day I posted that this question is a legal question for all of the scribes and Pharisees on facebook (and I can certainly be enough of a scribe to ask a legal question). It's a legal question with a legal answer. In this case, as in so many others, this law has nothing to do with love.

An aside: Once in college, I coordinated a graffiti wall for Student Activities on Valentines Day. I let people leave messages for everyone to see all over several bulletin boards in the College Commons. Yes, there was one rule to the graffiti wall: If I found it offensive, it was gone. I would take an exacto-knife and cut out the offending patch and staple in fresh paper in its stead. If any one asked what right I had to do the editing it was simple. It was my program, they were my rules, and the rules were posted, If I was the arbiter of propriety then it was my decision and it's as simple as that. (Yes, I did cut out profane and overly lurid posts.) I set myself up as judge and jury and had the disciplinary action set. You could post as much profanity as you wanted, I would just come back and cut it out. If you didn't like it, then don't post.

I mention this because I know facebook must have something about threatening speech in their "Terms of Service." It's all about enforcement. Outside of this legal thing, I believe there is no place in our world in hoping and praying for death. The Lord is the Lord of life, not the Lord of death. Especially friends in service to God in these groups should know better than praying for the death of any soul.

In the mean time, I just hope that everyone who has joined such a group or made such a post won't be too surprised when the Secret Service knocks on their door and makes their lives miserable for a season or two. As the old song goes, don't cross the river if you can't swim the tide.

In the meantime, a little Elvis Costello asking the musical question this post begs to be answered:

Signs of Truth

You may have received these images before of a Catholic and Cumberland Presbyterian church arguing whether "All Dogs Go to Heaven." I have gotten it three times from three different folks, and it never ceases to amuse me.

Honestly, I think it's hilarious!

There's one thing though...it's not real. For details, check out this urban legend website.

These signs were created by someone using the Church Sign Generator. Honestly though, knowing this was not a conversation held between two competing churches in the real world does not make a difference to me.

People often complain that churches fight over the dumbest things when the Body of Christ should focus on issues of poverty, justice, and service to the Lord. People say that churches should stop navel-gazing into the occupants of heaven and instead seek the Lord and live as resdients of the Kingdom of God on Earth.

The people who say Christians are hypocrites have a hay-day with stuff like this.

Let's all laugh at this, because it's funny. But only when we live our lives so that the Lord thinks this is funny-instead of being all so true-will the last laugh not be on us.

Virtual Nostalgia

Marie gave me permission to share this story with you.

The other day she was using Google Earth to check out her old stomping grounds, East Haven, Connecticut. She showed me the road she lived on, she showed me the beach. She showed me the park and she showed me the marina. She couldn't find the light house, but her cousin assures her it is still there.

Then it dawned on her. She was giving me the same tour her father would take her on of the old neighborhood. Of course, he did the tour from the road. "This is where so-and-so lived. This is where we would do such-and-such." The only difference is that we did it from the comfort of our own home.

So to speak, it was virtually the same tour.

As Jim Stafford sang in the song Wildwood Flower, "Take a trip and never leave the farm."

So Good to Be Back

Dear Friends and Readers,
It's good to be back online again. When the ice storm hit, we had a power surge which fried a line or two in the computer's operating system. That took a week to fix after the week it took for the ice to melt and the power to return. Then just to put an egg on the corned beef hash of fried computer-the modem went down too.

It's time to face the facts, I need a better surge protector.

Well, thanks to the First National Bank in Berryville's computer repair service and my ISP sending a new modem I am finally back online. I hope to resume my old blogging schedule and hope to hear from you all again soon.

Peace be with you all, Paul

Axl Rose Is Miffed!

Axl Rose, front man and lead singer of Guns N' Roses is upset with the makers of the "Guitar Hero III" video game. The game, which allows novices to "play guitar" to some of the greatest riffs written, features not only two GN'R songs; it also carries the image of the band's former guitar player, Slash.

Actually, the current incarnation of GN'R features only one original member, and that's Axl.

This article came from the British web site DigitalSpy.

Guns N' Roses singer Axl Rose has threatened to sue Guitar Hero publisher Activision over alleged use of the band's music without permission.

Rose told fans on MyGNRForum that he is considering legal action over the use of 'Welcome To The Jungle' and 'Sweet Child O' Mine' in the series.

He said he is "fine" with former bandmate Slash appearing in Guitar Hero III, but he is not happy about Activision's "unauthorised" use of the band's songs."

I read about it as it moved along but Activision continually denied it right up to the release," Rose explained. "That's some low life chicanery on all their parts." (Evidently Axl took English at George W. Bush Middle School)

"Yes, Slash was in Guns and on 'Jungle' and he has rights to perform it, but not to be represented in this context in association with Guns," he added. "And since they weren't granted the license, it'll take some sorting."

Let's begin with a little clarification, not only was Slash in the band at the time, he co-wrote the dang song. That would give him some rights. He wrote the bloody music, the guitar part the game invites the player to mimic. Of course they would use Slash's image and not Axl's!

And I have a question about the "unauthorized" use of the songs. Given that this is the third incarnation of this game, and there are other editions of similar games, I'd think the game makers would have the copywrite issue down by now. The song has also been used in many other games without a problem.

The only difference is this time Slash's image is used and he's not in the band any more--this is Axl is upset. So sorry William Bruce, er, Axl.

picture from DigitalSpy.

I'm Gettng Older

Yesterday I heard on the radio that Arby's has a service where you can send a text message and get the day's special. Now I don't know how this works. I guess you show the text message to the cashier and they hit a couple of buttons on the cash register and everything works out. For me there are two problems.

First, the closest Arby's restaurant is about 25 miles away.

Second, I don't know how to send a text. (Head hung low.)

That's right, I have gone from tech savvy to codger in a span of about 10 years. I can get and read a text message, but I don't know how to send one. I have turned the corner. Alas.

I'm Back!

Dearest readers, it seems that since Sunday my blog was locked out by Blogger because it "has been identified as a potential spam blog." So what does that mean? How was my blog singled out? In their own words...

"We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog like yours is flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this error. By using this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to bloggers like you instead of to spammers. For more information, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577"

At any rate, it's good to be back and remember, only you can prevent spam.