Snap thoughts

I was reading in the Houston Chronicle about Maria Butina. Spy stories are always super juicy. But this story involves the NRA, which is a landmine in my opinion. People seem to see the NRA as a villain, a scapegoat. And I'm reminded of something that my counselor shared mentioned, that some people are in it for their own selfish interests, to control other people. She was speaking of Christianity, but I'm realizing now that it applies to pretty much every institution. The NRA is a political organization, so that should be a given, but I often overlook such things.

The problem that see is that when it comes to gun control, the problem is bigger than the NRA. It's the second amendment, and what it means to a significant part of the population. The one side doesn't seem to understand what it means to the other. That this veers into strongly held beliefs territory.

I keep thinking that the left is going about things the wrong way. They need to reach out to the other side, not vilify it. I googled "you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar" and I found an interesting eecard here:

I don't have an answer.

Undocumented vs. Illegal

I have never been comfortable with the term undocumented in terms of immigration. To me it sounds like it's just a paperwork error. I have come to understand that the term illegal immigrant has fallen out of favor, with opponents saying that is dehumanizing. As near as I can tell, that doesn't apply if one uses the phrase illegal immigration or that a person entered the country illegally.

I did a quick Google search, and an article came up from the Washington Post. It helped educate me on some of the terms. Senator Kamala Harris said that undocumented immigrants are not criminals. And in a certain sense, she's right. The act of being in the country without permission is not a criminal matter, it is a civil one. But it's still a violation of law. And crossing the border illegally is a criminal offense. But technically, a person isn't a criminal until they've been convicted. So she can still say they aren't criminals if they haven't been caught. But that's pretty disingenuous in my opinion.

I came across another article from PolitiFact that further explains that the reason why immigration is a civil matter is because that makes it easier for the government to deal with. Because it isn't a criminal matter, there is no due process. The government doesn't have to provide a lawyer if the person cannot afford one. The burden is on the person to prove that they belong here, not the other way around.

But these articles are bringing up yet another term--criminality. Apparently criminal immigration is now a phrase. But these articles are basically saying that something can be illegal without being criminal, so they basically support the illegal label.

AI and Machine Learning

So how does one break into the Machine Learning field. This article provides some insight. Previously I looked at a Quora answer that I was thinking to link here, but now I think it's probably more worthwhile to link the question, How do I start learning artificial intelligence? There's lots of answers with lots of good stuff. Coursera courses are recommended, and Udacity, among others.

Dan Crenshaw

I honestly can't remember if I voted for Dan Crenshaw or not. But what I'm hearing about him so far sounds good. I read this article in the Washington Post, and I was impressed. I hope to hear more good things from him, and about him, in the future.

Sex Recession

As I was reading another article, the title Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex caught my eye. Yes, I am part of the statistic that only needs to see the word sex to have my attention drawn. It is an Atlantic article, so I knew it would be long. I didn't read the whole thing, I skimmed here and there. It is just as troubling as I thought it would be.

The slide towards deconversion

I got an email about an article getting a lot of attention on Twitter, and I decided to take a look.  The article getting everyone worked up was from the Gospel Coalition, authored by Alisa Childers, entitled 3 Beliefs Some Progressive Christians and Atheists Share. I made the mistake of reading lots of angry tweets about it before reading the article itself. Generally speaking, I agree with Childers. I don't think I can say that I spent any time with Progressive Christianity itself. I flirted with it for a bit, but my ultimate problem with it was the same thing that Childers said, I could already see where it led. It was basically just a slow boat out of the faith.

In my opinion, that's the reason why progressive churches are stagnant, while evangelicalism still have some life in it--Progressive Christianity isn't really Christianity. I know many would take exception to that, but I think the evidence stands for itself.

To recap, the three beliefs are:

1. They May Adopt a Belief That the Bible Is Unreliable
2. They May Have an Unresolved Answer to the Problem of Evil
3. They May Affirm a Culture-Adapting Morality

For the record, my issues with leaving the faith are almost totally wrapped up in 1. I have no issues at all with 2. I agree with Childers that 1. leads to 3. I had no issues holding fast to a morality wholly grounded in the Bible until I lost my faith in it.

I should also add that I do not consider myself an atheist. I also note that most of the people commenting on twitter didn't consider themselves atheists either. I don't see myself ever becoming an atheist. I'm somewhere between deism and agnosticism, and I see myself being here for a long time.

Power, influence and motivation

I'm in day 3 of the PMP boot camp. We were talking about the different types of power. It made me wonder what type of power a religious leader has. I found this page, which doesn't directly answer the question, but is interesting.

https://michaelhyatt.com/characteristics-of-spiritual-leaders/

I think I still want to be a spiritual leader, but I don't know how I can make that happen now.

I'm reminded of my look for self help books and how there was one on power that I should probably read. Also there was one by a spiritual leader that seems to have made up his own... not religion. Philosophy? I need to read that book too.

We also talked about motivational theories in the class. I had heard of Maslov, but not the others. I need to investigate those.