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paul
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10/30/2005 20:12 #32314

Media Biased and Twelve Tribes Continued
Category: media
(e:jason) and (e:joshua), I for one am not suggesting that the lefty press is any less biased. I don't think there is any such thing as unbiased media from any source, how can we pretend that is even possible. I always assume everything is biased and try and research stuff myself when I am interested enough. It is just so unlikely that writer can divorce their ideas from their writing enough to be unbiased, even if they really think that is what they are doing.

As for the Twelve Tribes, my feelings about them had nothing to do with Michael Niman. I don't even read his column. In fact, some drunken random girl read us the article out loud at Allen Street hardware one night. The name sounded famialiar so afterwards, I decided to go home and look them up when I realized they were the same people I had gotten into an argument with at that picnic I organized.

Then (e:mike) and I searched for their personal homepage and read the whole thing. We searched for information from former members and for news articles about them. I put all these links on my journal [inlink]paul,3949[/inlink] with my own commentary so that people could not only read my not very interesting opinion but could more importantly read the source materials and decide for themselves. I think that is what makes this format superior to print articles.

I didn't like The Twelve Tribes when I first met them on a purely gut level reaction and haven't bought their bread since 1995, about 10 years before Mike Niman wrote this article .

Here are some links to other journals involved in this discussion. [inlink]joshua,74[/inlink] [inlink]joshua,73[/inlink] [inlink]jason,276[/inlink] [inlink]ajay,390[/inlink] [inlink]joshua,73[/inlink]
joshua - 10/31/05 10:49
Nah you are honest, and I know the reasons for your suspicions of 12 Tribes. I don't dispute their creepiness!

10/29/2005 18:57 #32313

Sherbert Beta Hits
Category: programming
Introducing Paul Visco's Sherbert - An easy to use AJAX API

Sherbert - sher·bert (-bûrt') 1. A frozen dessert made primarily of fruit juice, sugar, and water, and also containing milk, egg white, or gelatin. 2. A beverage made of sweetened diluted fruit juice. 3. Australian An alcoholic beverage, especially beer. 4. Cross browser compatible xmlHTTP objects created by Paul Visco to make devloping Web 2.0 AJAX applications easier.

image

I decided that I was sick of depending on an external AJAX xmlHTTP object API. When I first started using AJAX on the site last year I used my own xmlHTTP scripts but soometime thereafter I picked up an XMLhttp API called CPAINT. Last night, I decided there were lots of things I liked about CPAINT but that I didn't need many of the lines of code it was using and that it would be good top just make my own API. It was also the last little snippet of code that wasn't my own out of the thousands of lines that make up (e:strip) and related projects.

You can find out a lot more information about Paul Visco's Sherbert Objects at the Sherbert website , which will be expanding shortly to include links to many new AJAX applications including the site sound chat.

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10/29/2005 03:37 #32312

The Twelve Tribes
Category: religion
[inlink]joshua,73[/inlink] My gut reaction to them was that I didn't like them having nothing to do with Mike Niman or the coop. It goes back to 1995 when I hosted this big vegan picnic/meeting at artpark and they showed up to get their religion on. (e:hodown) and I didn't hit it off well with them as you can imagine, (e:hodown) asked them to leave, and they left.

Here is their official site and some official quotes

What is your stance on homosexuality?

We do not approve of homosexual behavior. We do not regard it as a genetic variation, a valid alternative lifestyle, or a mere psychological quirk. We embrace what God says on this subject without regard for political correctness. Homosexual behavior is immoral and can be mortally dangerous.

Quoted from: The Twelve Tribes : Social Issues FAQ



Not a big surprise for any religious fanatical group but it does make me hate them with the same passion I have for fundamentalist christians.

We desire to speak proper English, free from slang and vulgarity, in the midst of every audio and visual stimulus to the contrary flooding our senses.

Quoted from: The Twelve Tribes : We Make No Apology%u2026


Gee - what do you think this means when translated.

Do you spank your children?

Yes, we do. We love our children and consider them precious and wonderful. Because we love them we do spank them. ... When they are disobedient or intentionally hurtful to others we spank them with a small reed-like rod, which only inflicts pain and not damage....The Columbine tragedy in particular points to the potentially terrible consequences of children left to themselves, who are not held accountable for their actions.

Quoted from: The Twelve Tribes : Family FAQs




Here is a site that people who have escaped made

Here is an expose by a man who is really angry about them

The history of

You can also visit their storeon South Creek in Hamburg (MAP TO: 327 BUFFALO ST) There commune is somewhere around 18 mile creek.
ajay - 10/31/05 01:10
Maybe (e:Jason) is too young to remember Jonestown...
paul - 10/29/05 20:36
At my picnic, they searched us out and were preaching at us in our space. I hated that, I guess it just left a bad impression.
trollheim - 10/29/05 18:47
I found the art voice's attack on them to be childish. They are just as hatefull as a hundred other groups in this country (Fundamentalists Christians/muslems, KKK, Conservatives, the official Def Leopard fanclub) but the difference here is that the 12 tribes have relativly no clout to speak of. Would the art voice be ballsy enough to attack the Pope? Na...

oh, and their movie reviews are dry!
jason - 10/29/05 16:07
"Gee - what do you think this means when translated."

I think it means exactly what they say - they are for the use of regular language without slang or vulgarity. Do only blacks use slang? No, of course not. Do only blacks use vulgarity? Again, no. Is slang or vulgarity ONLY in english? I use slang and vulgarity all the time. So do most of us. It doesn't take too much to turn on the TV or radio and hear all kinds of people from various demographics demolish language.

I don't care if they disapprove of homosexuality, and I don't care if they spank their kids. They live the way they want to live, they are not politically active and they are not forcing people to do what they do. They are far less dangerous than the Falwells and Robertsons of the world.

My attitude is this - I don't care what people think or how they live their own lives as long as they are not breaking laws and as long as they are not acting politically to force their lifestyle or ideology on others. This goes for fundie christians, militant islam, extemist lefties, so on and so forth.

10/28/2005 18:01 #32311

Holy Fast Download
Category: web
I was busy working on a new AJAX system when I tried to download the new iTunes. It is 33MB and downloaded in a couple seconds. At one point I get 4000k/second! Those speeds seem so crazy. Imagine if the whole internet was like that.

10/28/2005 00:21 #32310

Super Mario
Category: games
Someone has rewritten super mario brothers as a DHTML javascript application. It is so crazy. It is actually quite playable. Spacebar is jump, the arrow keys move. Check it out

image

dcoffee - 10/28/05 01:15
looks good, but I can't read japanese. so I can't figure out what to press to start it. that must have taken some work!