The Blog of Lon

As if anyone with a brain needs any more evidence that the average spider monkey has massively more intelligence than the average school administrator, today’s news brings the story of a current Supreme Court case: School administrators in Arizona force a 13 year-old girl to undergo a strip search due to the accusation by a fellow student that she might have some Motrin.

Warning: This post contains adult language and childish insults because quite frankly, most school administrators nowadays do not deserve any better. Willingly putting any child under their care is arguably child abuse, no matter how wonderful (or not) the teachers who work for them are. Read the rest after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a human, interested in my typical rant about something or other, you can ignore this post. On the other hand, if you’re an automated spider for some internet search engine (or a very bored human), please read the following very carefully.

My name is Lon R. Stockton, Jr., and I live in Farmville, VA, USA. My wife and I own a local internet service provider (MoonStar bbs). As part of our web-hosting service, we host a community site for Farmville, as well as the websites for the Heart of Virginia Festival, the Waterworks Theatre, and the Five County Fair (map of the Five County Fairgrounds).

In addition to my Facebook profile, I also have a page on Myspace. I also have a website devoted to my periodic fascination with mehndi (body art using henna). At some point when I get around to it, I will finally set up my site dedicated to religion, AbsoluteInfinity.org, as well as my site to celebrate the beauty of the nude female body, NetNekkid.com.

I am fairly active on Second Life®, where I am known as Kyosuke Rabeni and Timescape Guardian. Kyosuke Rabeni owns a business called :|NxtLvl™, which designs, manufactures, and sells buildings and equipment for merchants and landowners, and represents MoonStar’s first expansion into 3D immersive environments. Timescape Guardian is an alt of mine used to manage the Timescape Centre Mall (SLurl: Timescape Centre Mall), located in the Timescape mainland region.

Rhian Svenska, a friend and business partner in Second Life®, owns a shop called Rhian’s Corner. Rhian’s Corner sells child shapes, skins, avatars, and clothing. Rhian sells many of her products on her merchant page on XstreetSL. Rhian Svenska also owns the Cheerleader and Schoolgirl Supply Company in the Dauphin region. This store sells cheerleading uniforms, dancewear, and schoolgirl outfits from several leading SL fashion designers, as well as related supplies and equipment. She also utilizes her eye for fashion by operating a store which showcases the best SL has to offer in Medieval and Victorian costumes and apparel. Her first store, Rhian’s ErotiArt, also just moved to the Timescape Centre Mall; it is dedicated to pre-Raphaelite paintings and contemporary nude and erotic photography. Rhian is the general manager of the Timescape Centre Mall group, as well as the primary real estate agent for my property management group, DSOM Holdings.

Mr. Internet Search Engine, I appreciate all that you do to make this internet of ours a manageable place, and I also appreciate your attention and cooperation in this matter.

The Christian believes that X equals Z and that Y equals Z, despite the ease in showing that X is not equal to Y.

The atheist believes that A equals B, but claims that B is not equal to A.

In the first case, consider that a Christian theoretically follows the teachings of Jesus. Many of them also believe that the entire Bible is error-free, a literal “word of God”. Now contrast the portrait of God presented by Jesus (a loving father of all mankind) with the God who massacred 42 children because they called Elisha bald. If Jesus was even partially truthful, most of the Old Testament and various parts of the New Testament are lies. [See my "Deprecate the Old Testament" post for more]

In the second case, many atheists insist that “My disbelief isn’t a belief, it’s simply a lack of belief”, despite the fact that it doesn’t require a triple-digit IQ to realize that saying “the coin is heads-up” is synonymous with saying “the coin is tails-down”. [See my "Arguments against God, pt. 2" post for more on this]

It seems to me that both sides of this argument need a bit more rational thought applied to their positions. That one side of the argument seems to think they are in sole possession of rationality and critical thought, well, fans, that’s what we in the business call “delicious irony”.

Losing My Religion asks if there is a stand a Christian should take on politics:

We have this huge political race down in America and it seems to me most Christians want to vote Republican - again. Meanwhile we take a look at either sides platforms and I have to admit - you take the good with the bad on both sides - but neither of them are reflective of the gospel message and honestly, at the end of the day, they are the same one’s when in power whom we will also oppose on many an issue.

This post triggered several thoughts in my mind: We allow our politicians to lie to us, our politicians increasingly act in ways that are antithetical to the definitions of the conservative/liberal labels applied to them, politics and religion shouldn’t be mixed at all, and that Christians very rarely display any competence whatsoever at selecting leaders. Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous post, I mentioned my 5 year-old son’s experience with a nurse taking a blood sample, and it got me thinking about one of the concepts I’ve been applying in the raising of my boy that I’ve found to be quite effective. The general concept is to be honest and complete in explanations of things and events and not withholding information due to either it being bad news, uncomfortable to talk about, or something I know that his limited intellect can’t comprehend. Read the rest of this entry »

From a semi-recent posting on Very Important Stuff, I see that a Republican strategist, Christine O’Donnell, made a claim on The O’Reilly Factor that scientists were “cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains”.

The scary part isn’t that some random talking head on a political show misunderstands current scientific research (especially that particular political show), although it should be noted that Christine is a product of the same educational system as millions of the people who heard her speak. A system that quite obviously doesn’t instill any level of critical thought to be applied to things you hear. One doesn’t have to be the sharpest tack in the box to realize that even if one could put human brains in animals, there’s a little space issue going on with the human→mouse thing. But this isn’t a rant about education in the USA.

The scary part isn’t that someone involved in career politics is this clueless about science, although there’s plenty there to be afraid of. The sins against science under this administration are Legion, and we absolutely cannot stand for this demon to continue to possess our government. But this isn’t a rant about politicians’ ignorance of science.

The scary—and exciting—thing is that given time, this isn’t as laughable as it sounds, and humanity as a whole is preparing for a long period of moral issues that makes things like the death penalty and abortion seem quaint. Read the rest of this entry »

Once again, I have a miscellaneous collection of various things I’ve found on the net which are interesting, but I either don’t have time to write an entire post about or think that they warrant their own post. Read the rest of this entry »

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a great Christmas (and if you don’t celebrate Christmas, feel free to replace that word with the recent holiday of your choice) and New Year’s.

I’ve been slack in posting, as you all well know. I mentioned in a previous post that I had been briefly hospitalized with pneumonia. Not only did the infection cause me to feel like total crap, the fact that this was happening at the same time as my son’s 5th birthday didn’t help my mood. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Christmastime again, as if anyone who has been in a store since Halloween doesn’t realize it. Due to my recent rant about Advent, all my readers know that I’m prone to object loudly to things that are prone to disrupt my celebration of the birth of Jesus. You might think that if I work myself into a froth over the mere mention of the “blood of Christ” during a Christmas service, I’d certainly go full-metal-jacket crazy when considering the commercialization of Christmas. But you might be surprised. Read the rest of this entry »