Seth Keiper

John Adams to Thomas Jefferson.

Quincy, September 14, 1813.

Dear Sir,—I owe you a thousand thanks for your favor of August 22d and its enclosures, and for Dr. Priestley’s doctrines of Heathen Philosophy compared with those of Revelation.  Your letter to Dr. Rush and the syllabus, I return enclosed with this according to your injunctions, though with great reluctance.  May I beg a copy of both ?

They will do you no harm ;  me and others much good.

I hope you will pursue your plan, for I am confident you will produce a work much more valuable than Priestley’s, though that is curious, and considering the expiring powers with which it was written, admirable.

The bill in Parliament for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians, is a great event, and will form an epoch in ecclesiastical history.  The motion was made by my friend Smith, of Clapham, a friend of the Belshams.

I should be very happy to hear that the bill is passed.

The human understanding is a revelation from its Maker which can never be disputed or doubted.  There can be no scepticism, Pyrrhonism, or incredulity, or infidelity, here.  No prophecies, no miracles are necessary to prove the celestial communication.

This revelation has made it certain that two and one make three, and that one is not three nor can three be one.  We can never be so certain of any prophecy, or the fulfilment of any prophecy, or of any miracle, or the design of any miracle, as we are from the revelation of nature, i.e., Nature’s God, that two and two are equal to four.  Miracles or prophecies might frighten us out of our wits;  might scare us to death;  might induce us to lie, to say that we believe that two and two make five.  But we should not believe it.  We should know the contrary.

Had you and I been forty days with Moses on Mount Sinai, and been admitted to behold the divine Shekinah, and there told that one was three and three one, we might not have had courage to deny it, but we could not have believed it.

The thunders, and lightnings, and earthquakes, and the transcendent splendors and glories might have overwhelmed us with terror and amazement, but we could not have believed the doctrine.  We should be more likely to say in our hearts whatever we might say with our lips,—This is chance.  There is no God, no truth.  This is all delusion, fiction, and a lie, or it is all chance.  But what is chance ?  It is motion, it is action, it is event, it is phenomenon without cause.

Chance is no cause at all, it is nothing.  And nothing has produced all this pomp and splendor.  And nothing may produce our eternal damnation in the flames of hell-fire and brimstone, for what we know, as well as this tremendous exhibition of terror and falsehood.

God has infinite wisdom, goodness and power.  He created the universe.  His duration is eternal, a parts ante and a parts post.

His presence is as extensive as space.  What is space ?  An infinite spherical vacuum.  He created this speck of dirt and the human species for his glory, and with the deliberate design of making nine-tenths of our species miserable forever, for his glory.

This is the doctrine of Christian Theologians in general, ten to one.

Now, my friend, can prophecies or miracles convince you or me, that infinite benevolence, wisdom and power, created and preserves for a time, innumerable millions, to make them miserable forever for his own glory ?

Wretch !  What is his glory ?  Is he ambitious ?  Does he want promotion ?  Is he vain-tickled with adulation ?  Exulting and triumphing in his power and the sweetness of his vengeance ?

Pardon me, my Maker, for these awful questions.  My answer to them is always ready.  I believe no such things.  My adoration of the Author of the Universe is too profound and too sincere.

The love of God and his creation, delight, joy, triumph, exultation in my own existence, though but an atom, a molecule organique in the universe, are my religion.  Howl, snarl, bite, ye Calvinistic, ye Athanasian divines, if you will.  Ye will say I am no Christian.  I say ye are no Christians, and there the account is balanced.

Yet I believe all the honest men among you are Christians, in my sense of the word.

When I was at college, I was a metaphysician, at least I thought myself such.  And such men as Locke, Hemmenway and West, thought me so too;  for we were forever disputing though in great good humor.

When I was sworn as an attorney, in 1758, in Boston, though I lived in Braintree, I was in a low state of health—thought in great danger of a consumption ;  living on milk, vegetable pudding and water.  Not an atom of meat, or a drop of spirit.  My next neighbor, my cousin, my friend Dr. Savil, was my physician.  He was anxious about me, and did not like to take the sole responsibility of my recovery.  He invited me to a ride.  I mounted my horse and rode with him to Hingham, on a visit to Dr. Ezekiel Hersey, a physician of great fame, who felt my pulse, looked in my eyes, heard Savil describe my regimen and course of medicine, and then pronounced his oracle :  “Persevere, and as sure as there is a God in Heaven you will recover.”

He was an everlasting talker, and ran out into history, philosophy, metaphysics, &c., and frequently put questions to me as if he wanted to sound me, and see if there was anything in me besides hectic fever.  I was young, and then very bashful, however saucy I may have sometimes been since.  I gave him very modest and very diffident answers.  But when I got upon metaphysics, I seemed to feel a little bolder, and ventured into something like argument with him.  I drove him up, as I thought, into a corner, from which he could not escape.  “Sir, it will follow from what you have now advanced, that the universe, as distinct from God, is both infinite and eternal.”  “Very true,” said Dr. Hersey, “your inference is just, the consequence is inevitable, and I believe the universe to be both eternal and infinite.”

Here I was brought up !  I was defeated.  I was not prepared for this answer.  This was fifty-five years ago.

When I was in England, from 1785 to 1788, I may say I was intimate with Dr. Price.  I had much conversation with him at his own house, at my house, and at the houses and tables of my friends.  In some of our most unreserved conversations, when we have been alone, he has repeatedly said to me :  “I am inclined to believe that the universe is eternal and infinite.  It seems to me that an eternal and infinite effect must necessarily flow from an eternal and infinite cause ;  and an infinite wisdom, goodness and power, that could have been induced to produce a universe in time, must have produced it from eternity.  It seems to me the effect must flow from the cause.”

Now, my friend Jefferson, suppose an eternal, self-existent being, existing from eternity, possessed of infinite wisdom, goodness and power, in absolute, total solitude, six thousand years ago, conceiving the benevolent project of creating a universe !  I have no more to say at present.

It has been long, very long, a settled opinion in my mind, that there is now, never will be, and never was but one being who can understand the universe.

And that it is not only vain, but wicked, for insects to pretend to comprehend it.

Today, Krugman told me that "Governments don’t have to pay back their debt…" because "we" own "our" debt. In reality, the "We" is the U.S. government (and Federal Reserve [11%]) and the "our" are people like Bill Gross, one of the world’s most closely followed bond fund managers.

Guess what? People like Bill Gross are "selling Treasuries because they have little value within the context of a $75 trillion total debt burden."

Why is he selling his Treasuries? Bill Gross states "inflation, currency devaluation, and low to negative real interest rates." GASP

I guess we should trust Krugman since, you know, he teaches Economics. We shouldn't trust people like Bill Gross because he is "part of the 1%" and makes his living from actually being a bond fund manager.

Ever want to drop all MySQL Stored Procedures?

Here is how you can do it:

USE <DATABASENAME>;

SELECT
  CONCAT_WS("",
    "DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS ",
    `R`.`SPECIFIC_NAME`
  ) AS DeleteStorePrecedure
  FROM `information_schema`.`ROUTINES` AS R
  WHERE `R`.`ROUTINE_TYPE` = "PROCEDURE"
  AND `R`.`ROUTINE_SCHEMA` = DATABASE()
;

Alternatively, you can load this data into an outputted file:

USE <DATABASENAME>;

SELECT
  CONCAT_WS("",
    "DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS ",
    `R`.`SPECIFIC_NAME`
  ) INTO OUTFILE '/tmp/drop_procedures.sql'
  FROM `information_schema`.`ROUTINES` AS R
  WHERE `R`.`ROUTINE_TYPE` = "PROCEDURE"
  AND `R`.`ROUTINE_SCHEMA` = DATABASE()
;

Then, you can source the drop statements:

source /tmp/drop_procedures.sql

There is buzz about a possible million man march, or human wave, into Israel on May 15, 2011. Also, the Ministry of Interior in Egypt demanded organizers of the March on Israel to cancel.

For some odd reason, the Western Media is not reporting on this, yet.

Here is a view of Google Realtime (as an example):

In firefox, open the firefox advanced preferences by visiting:

about:config

Then search for: browser.tabs.animate

Right click and either toggle or switch to false.

Now, here is a nice little GIF for you to enjoy since you accomplished this small task:

Medical breakthrough. Amazing how quickly with this new "Skin Gun" that burnt people recuperate. The state trooper from Pennsylvania in the video, he was healed in 4 days from a severe 2nd degree burn. For more of a look into the scientific process for those interested, here is a look.

Did the IE9 team "acquire" the look and feel of a mixture of Firefox and Chrome? Looks like they took Firefox's back and forward buttons and Chrome's tab layout. Ugh, and it looks like they "acquired" Opera's Dial

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. — Mark Twain (aka. Samuel Clemens)

Oracle made a maintenance update release of Oracle VM VirtualBox version 4.0.2 today. You can download it now, or read about the changes in the ChangeLog.