Phone calls to customer service are never fun. Always they are warranted by a failing internet connection. And the only reason you noticed that your internet connection was down is because you were trying to use it at the time. I can probably count with one side of a coin how many times customers have called their ISP's customer service department to express satisfaction and gratitude.
So, your calls always follow on the heels of dropped Internet.
My favorite part of the interview is when they ask whether or not a router is connected to the modem. I generally explain that because the year is 2010, that yes: I've connected a wireless router to the cable modem just like the other 99% of their customers. Invariably, their diagnosis involves me disconnecting the modem from the router and connecting it to a single PC. It doesn't matter how many times I tell them that the router's settings haven't changed - the problem is on their end. They just won't let go of the possibility that MY router is causing the problem.
It's like a stone has been dropped and now obstructs the small stream of their mind, turning fluid thinking into a sputtering blockage. Endless are their suggestions, like the router is introducing some electrical discord into the harmony of their perfect service.
Now it's obvious to me that the ISP's want to avoid paying a technician for a house call, right up to the point you ditch their service. It still gets me everytime is how they talk about routers hooked into modems like it's some kind of brand new experimental technology and their service doesn't support it. They never make that last part explicit, but the insinuation is there.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Secular Ideology and Global Warming Fears
It occurred to me today that global warming fears are fed, or at least helped, by thick arteries of secular ideology.
Let me demonstrate the opposing view, theistic belief:
Christian thinking presents a world as designed and set in place by a Creator. Not only was the Earth created by God (as was Man and the Universe), but also that this God cares about His creation and is more than competent enough to design and construct a robust planet, capable of sustaining His creations along with their activities (which include mining and using fossil fuels). The conclusion is Earth, along with Mankind and the Universe, as a product of engineering and like well engineered products, Earth was designed with a high degree of fault-tolerance.
Therefore, fears that normal human behavior, like pumping gasoline into your car and then driving it or otherwise emitting carbon dioxide, will not cause the Earth's biological system to capsize. Faith in a competent and caring God allay these fears.
On the other hand, secularists share an opposite understanding. Their creation account declares that the Earth, as well as the Universe - and of course, Man himself - is an accident. Earth and Man and everything that is is the result of some cosmological coincidence, in which a precise Big Bang produced the laws and components ripe for Earth to form and then host life which managed to assemble and diversify itself. They conclude that the Earth is a spilt deck that managed to fall into a magnificent house of cards against impossible odds.
I have no doubt the leading supporters of the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis have designed and delivered a tower of lies, with the simple intent of theft. Yet their subordinate supporters seem to demonstrate sincere fears that one wrong move on part of man-kind can carry the penalty of an Extinction Level Event. Given these doctrines of their alternate faith, it's easy to understand why: they believe the Earth is the coincidence of ten thousand variables and therefore would react to very differently than if it were designed.
AGW supporters generally exhibit this sort of Peak-Thinking: that catastrophe lies beyond some fine and unknown point of no return. Peak-Thinking doesn't necessarily correlate with secularism, yet seems able to encourage other irrational and alarmist conclusions (eg: Gold Bugs and Peak Oil), but that's another discussion.
Let me demonstrate the opposing view, theistic belief:
Christian thinking presents a world as designed and set in place by a Creator. Not only was the Earth created by God (as was Man and the Universe), but also that this God cares about His creation and is more than competent enough to design and construct a robust planet, capable of sustaining His creations along with their activities (which include mining and using fossil fuels). The conclusion is Earth, along with Mankind and the Universe, as a product of engineering and like well engineered products, Earth was designed with a high degree of fault-tolerance.
Therefore, fears that normal human behavior, like pumping gasoline into your car and then driving it or otherwise emitting carbon dioxide, will not cause the Earth's biological system to capsize. Faith in a competent and caring God allay these fears.
On the other hand, secularists share an opposite understanding. Their creation account declares that the Earth, as well as the Universe - and of course, Man himself - is an accident. Earth and Man and everything that is is the result of some cosmological coincidence, in which a precise Big Bang produced the laws and components ripe for Earth to form and then host life which managed to assemble and diversify itself. They conclude that the Earth is a spilt deck that managed to fall into a magnificent house of cards against impossible odds.
I have no doubt the leading supporters of the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis have designed and delivered a tower of lies, with the simple intent of theft. Yet their subordinate supporters seem to demonstrate sincere fears that one wrong move on part of man-kind can carry the penalty of an Extinction Level Event. Given these doctrines of their alternate faith, it's easy to understand why: they believe the Earth is the coincidence of ten thousand variables and therefore would react to very differently than if it were designed.
AGW supporters generally exhibit this sort of Peak-Thinking: that catastrophe lies beyond some fine and unknown point of no return. Peak-Thinking doesn't necessarily correlate with secularism, yet seems able to encourage other irrational and alarmist conclusions (eg: Gold Bugs and Peak Oil), but that's another discussion.
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