Everywhere Invisible

~ I HAVE NEVER visited a gulag or Nazi prison-camp like Auschwitz. And no, I’d not be taking selfies.

However, in Canada, every time you walk into a major hospital, you are, in effect, walking into a roofed-over death camp. Babies aborted, seniors encouraged to die, via food-deprivation and over-drugging.

More About Me

When the Binks-twins were born early after a difficult pregnancy (3 pounds birth-weight each), that hospital– allegedly a union between a Salvation Army maternity hospital and a secular hospital– was in the process of (Oh. My. Who could have foreseen it?!) purging Christerdom and holy ickiness.

Even as our bitty wee boys were fighting for life, born with a fighting 50% chance to live, but with the very best of the best in NICU (Neonatal ICU) staff, medications, and technology aiding them to live… even with this, the hospital powers-that-be had agreed to perform abortions in a children’s-maternity hospital. You know, spread the evil around.

Why? Honestly, I just dunno. The biggest hospital in the province is literally eight blocks up the road, where they already massacre many hundreds of unborn babies yearly. Spread the evil around? After I heard the news about this ‘policy adjustment’, all I could think of was two babies under the same roof– one, possibly healthy and near-term being medically murdered; the other child premature, being fought for with all the best that 20th century medicine could possibly do for them.

We were going to donate to the NICU, but sadly enough, we could not and do not support abortion. Suddenly when I saw that hospital I my mind’s eye, all I could see were the ghosts of the slain unborn drifting the halls, perhaps pausing at the NICU, where babies like they had been were being supported, healed, given a chance at life.

See No Evil

This is the nature of our modern evil; the German populace looked away from the vanishing of their Jewish, socialist, outspoken Christian and expendable nuisance neighbours; ignored the smoke and smells and traffic to and from places in the woods near their towns and villages where people went in but rarely came out. As long as we can look away with some plausibility, the blame surely lies.. elsewhere?

And the little baby-ghosts drift about our feet like milkweed fluff, asking us questions we dare not frame, or answer. ~

Elf-Approved

~ DEARLY DEPARTED Binks-Dad was nerdissimus– nerdiest of nerds– until a mini-stroke a few months before he died stole away his interest & ability for same. Still, he was ever sending me nerdy sites, nerdy apps & links & ideas. Thus, I give the credit for this one to Dugald Binks-Dad: may he rest in peace and rise in glory.

Sharing The Deep Nerdly Secrets Of Nerds

This one is for people concerned about privacy, ease of computing whilst travelling, or having access to your own stuff when you have only someone else’s computer to use. Portable Apps. Like many of the leading freeware sites (like the free MS-Office replacement Libre Office), they depend on your donations.

The basic idea? have functional mini-versions of the most-used programs available on a thumb-drive, data card, or even hidden on your camera memory-card, or on a cloud-drive such as DropBox. That’s 300+ legal & portable apps at your fingertips, anywhere. The fullest possible package is 9GB, but the most basic collection (e-mail, browser, office-suite, etc.) is far smaller.

I know, right?

Free Brilliant Idea: you may not need this, but someone around you or at work might. Pass it on. Another Free Brilliant Idea: want a cheap gift-idea? Buy a thumb-drive or a tiny flash drive or one of those flat tiny indestructible keychain drives, load it up with portable apps, and– Boom– a geeky present for some nerd you care about. Yet even another Free Brilliant Idea? Have several on you with identical data (passworded, of course) for back-up convenience, plus on a cloud-drive for when you travel.

You’re welcome, and yes, I am Binks MacDugald, nerdy elf. ~

Binky Tips # 230,012

The bad news: evil is afoot.

The good news: there’s evil afoot all over the place, so pick some and go beat on it, give the devil a bash, and redeem the time, for the days are evil. *

Paging Dr. Fronkensteen

I say, old chap, I am not, in fact, ‘Frankenstein’. My name is Adam.

~ Genetically Modified Food: Bad; Genetically Modified Humans: Good

~ Rebecca Taylor is a clinical laboratory specialist in molecular biology. She writes about bioethics on her blog Mary Meets Dolly (MaryMeetsDolly.com, and blog)

~ MARY SHELLEY’S Frankenstein is about the man, not his monster; about the cleverly evil human intelligence seeking to do the unholy and horrid thing of making a creature in his own twisted image, with all the consequences of a false god making a monster.

For those who’ve read the book (free, here), a crucial thing needs to be underlined: the awesome subtitle– “Or, The Modern Prometheus“. Greek myth? Yup– the mythical Prometheus, perhaps full of good intentions, who first makes man out of clay, and later steals fire from the gods to give it to mankind. Yay, fire!

Not So Fast

Olympus is not amused. The gods punish the uppity titan Prometheus by chaining him to a mountain, where an eagle comes and eats his liver, which grows back every night. Forever.

Humans? The gods impart to us blind desires, so they never quite know where they are headed, what they are up to, or the consequences.. and yet have the terrible powers of fire, and technology. Talk about a toddler with a flame-thrower.

Fire: heat, comfort, cooking, and all the good things we need. Also, the forge:  sharper and crueller weapons. Burning things (and people) down. Gunpowder. Engines. Tanks & aircraft & battleships and nuclear weapons. Yay, fire?

Remember: myths are not synonymous with falsehoods. A myth may be true, but not historical or factual. They can provide warnings, wisdom, tragic insight into human weakness, foolishness, and failure, and deeply thought out mysteries of life, the gods, and everything. The Greeks who gave us Prometheus also taught us about hubris & nemesis (overweening pride & fall), tragedy, human guilt, and warnings about human power and consequences.

Plus, spiffy hairdos.

What She Said

So: we humans are full of reckless power, and blind desires. A deadly combination. Much of the history of humanity and the things we make is that they are used to unmake us; or, our things begin to shape and remake us. Never moreso than the time since the Industrial Revolution, a tidal-wave of mixed blessings. We are fools with pride, power, and no clue.

So when I read the horrifying article above, all I could think of was a host of clueless genetic kindergartner Dr. Frankensteins, cheerfully tampering with ‘curing’ disease (i.e., indirectly creating new & impossibly destructive bacteria & viruses).. then, maybe, ‘fixing’ the appearance and intelligence of children… then, with how they act, what they believe, what they are for.. then, before we know it, we have the ultimate horror, flawed and sinful and imperfect humans controlling and making other humans for all sorts of ‘noble’ or nefarious purposes– it hardly matters which. It’s the logical extension of eugenics and abortion, which grew up together in the fascist 20s and 30s, and which has survived to this day under politer euphemisms.

And this is only what we know about. No doubt there are top secret dark labs and experiments which cry out to heaven for divine fire to smash them to dust. For in every sphere of activity or technology, humans are capable of Promethean deeds.. which always bear in them the punishment and foreseeable consequences and death and destruction we may not have directly intended, but directly brought about. We are Dr. Mengele, and Dr. Frankenstein, as well as Dr. Banting (diabetes treatment), or Dr. Lister (modern hygenic surgery).

Always smiling.. such a happy monster, was Joe Mengele!

As the author of the article, Rebecca Taylor, concludes:

Whatever the cause, it is clear that genetically modified humans are on the horizon. The only way to prevent the genetic modification of the next generation is to engage the public. Society already perceives that genetically modifying plants and animals may not be the healthiest for humans or the environment.

If GMOs in our food make us uneasy, then genetically modifying our offspring should be unthinkable.

~ Binks

Go To Hell, All Of You..

Lost In A Dark Wood

.. BY READING DANTE– Binks is re-reading Dante’s Divine Comedy for Lent. I have yet to complete Paradiso (10th try), and it’s no good to get stuck in purgatory or hell.

I recommend the Dorothy L. Sayers translation, for her attempt to convey the lively sense and humble self-mocking humour of Dante, the Italian terza rima (almost limerick form, as it were), along with her massive scholarship and understanding of Dante and Christianity. I understand that some people need blandly modernish language to get started– for me, it’s as if someone redid all the great paintings in crayon, or the masterworks of Bach for kazoo. And yes, I laugh at PDQ Bach.

For Lent, I’d suggest you read and apply to yourself the various scenes Dante presents, and ignore the usual modern moral outrage about this or that sinner. Remember: Dante is first of all the soul in question, and then ourselves second; and if we were to make it modern, we can all figure out various people in politics, business, or pop culture who could fit as examples of the various sins in question– without ‘consigning them to hell’, which is finally God’s business. But The Divine Comedy is meant in part to be a mirror for our own souls in our pilgrimage towards or away from God, minding our own business first of all being a good spiritual principle.

I read each chapter cold, then the notes, then read the chapter again, with notes in mind. If you’re a visual reader, try the famous engravings by Gustave Doré which go with each chapter.

A blessed Lent to all of you. ~

~ Binks

Love Thee More And More

~ CONFESSION: I GOT a man-crush on a dead guy. That’s him above, age 17, just before he got married.

Binks has written before about James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, one of the greatest Scots Generals ever. Slandered and written out of Scottish history by the deranged Scottish Taliban, a.k.a. Covenanters, Graham was historically rehabilitated 2 centuries after his hanging & dismemberment by lawyer and author Mark Napier, a distant relative of the famous Napiers of Graham’s own time, intermarried and connected with the Great Montrose and his family.

A Man In Full

I’ve been reading a full biography of the man, and admiring him more and more as I go. The young Montrose (13 upwards) turns out to have been kind, prudent, generous, charitable, well-educated, a poet, skilled with bow and musket, a fashionable young noble & cavalier, a true ornament to a famous and powerful family– someone who seems to have understood in his bones that power & wealth are opportunities to do good, gifts enabling one to help others, and live to the full.

From his private accounts-books, we find the young Graham travelling widely, attending the university of St. Andrews, visiting other nobility, friends, and family. Along with bills and payments for his rich taste in clothes, good books, good horses, and the usual accompaniments of a privileged life, what is striking is that on  every possible occasion, he is dispensing charity and little thank-yous to servants, helpers, children, flood-victims or the hungry. He also paid for a small library to be established and maintained– all this when a teenager. These accounts were never meant to be publicized, and represent the man as he was, and not as he may have wished to be known or self-publicized.

What  A Loss

There is what Montrose actually and nobly did do with his life; and then there is the sacrifice he made of his wealth, wide lands and houses and castles, his family, and his own possibilities as a man and a leader had his times been different and more peaceable. God bless Mark Napier and his friends and colleagues in the 19th century who helped set the record straight; to Nigel Tranter for his historical novel about the man; to the interweb & library nerds who put Napier’s works online for download in 2014, and for the manly, good, kind, and brave example of a life lived for the good of neighbour and unto God and King, by James Graham, one of the Binkses’ personal heroes. ~

James Graham, Marquis of Montrose. 1612–1650

334. I’ll never love Thee more

MY dear and only Love, I pray
That little world of thee
Be govern’d by no other sway
Than purest monarchy;
For if confusion have a part	5
(Which virtuous souls abhor),
And hold a synod in thine heart,
I’ll never love thee more.
Like Alexander I will reign,
And I will reign alone;	10
My thoughts did evermore disdain
A rival on my throne.
He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch,	15
To gain or lose it all.
And in the empire of thine heart,
Where I should solely be,
If others do pretend a part
Or dare to vie with me,	20
Or if Committees thou erect,
And go on such a score,
I’ll laugh and sing at thy neglect,
And never love thee more.
But if thou wilt prove faithful then,	25
And constant of thy word,
I’ll make thee glorious by my pen
And famous by my sword;
I’ll serve thee in such noble ways
Was never heard before;	30
I’ll crown and deck thee all with bays,
And love thee more and more.