Pip-pip to my friend blogless Phil and Vox Populi.
Caveat videor, mildly gratuitous and profane:
Dawkins - Beware The Believers- [Dicky D Rap]
Uploaded by randomslice
Here's a shameless plug for Wheatstone Academy, a program I have been privileged to work for several times since the inaugural conference.
Wheatstone does the kind of education that excites me: it doesn't get much better than touring art museums, reading Plato, dangling off cliffs, etc. With high school students. In FabuLos Angeles.
If you or your bright and motivated adolescents are looking for an opportunity to blow the circuits on your Christianity I can't think of a better opportunity. Tell them I sent you.
To learn more check out the web site. Pay especial attention to the new promo video that features my friends and students. Oh, and my still photography.
Here's a question: If a frequent flier mileage credit card offers you $50 off a ticket for signing up, is it worth it?
My former professional life involved these questions on a regular basis. The moral is almost always that the catches make the deals not worth it.
But I anticipate a LOT of travel in the next year so I read the finest print and accepted this offer. With a full awareness that the $50 annual fee would immediately offset the saved $ from my first ticket.
So now I have the card, and yes the print gets even finer. No APR interest charged on balance transfers, that's good. Oh, wait, there's a "finance charge" for transfers of 3%, capped at $50. If I transfer $2000 (which I'm pleased to say I can't do) the fee is $50. But at least I get a FF mile for every dollar transferred so that helps right? Well, cashing them in for a ticket takes 25,000 miles, so in this scheme 25k miles are probably worth about $300 assuming I can get on the flight I want, which makes the cash-munny value of each mile-dollar transferred about a penny. So, I pay $50 to earn 2000 miles, worth about $20. The only way transferring balances is worthwhile is if you transfer so many the finance charge is mitigated. To break even I have to transfer $5000 and pay it off before the robust interest rate kicks in. This balance transfer offer is the kind of dog that should be kicked for looking cute but wanting to bite your hand.
Is the card a deal? Jury is out. I get to try it free for a year. I don't spend that much regularly on credit so it will remain to be seen if tickets purchased are a clincher and can make this work in my favor. I'm no longer optimistic.
And if you stopped reading before you go to this point your probably the kind of consumer that fine print printers make money off of. Not that you know it.
I'm inclined to vote for Mike Huckabee just for doing a Chuck Norris Facts ad.
I don't know anything about Mike Huckabee. And I'm almost surely the kind of voting sucker every candidate would take a vote from if it came to running a hilarious ad.
Besides, Chuck Norris trained in Tang Soo Do and taught Bruce Lee the Tang Soo Do kicking techniques that became part of Jeet Kune Do. And I did Tang Soo Do and have seen at least one Bruce Lee movie, so I think Chuck Norris is very trustworthy.
Good thing my grandmother is still around to advise me on matters of substance and be sure I punch the right chad. If you need someone to explain how a breakfast taco should be made I'm your man. Picking a leader of the free world is more of a challenge.
Kulix libation to The Shark for this one.
Apparently you can make a tax-free donation to those who study Crop Circles. Without discriminating against those who think aliens make Crop Circles.
I sort of hope they prove that aliens make Crop Circles, because then we can probably blame aliens for Global Warming also.
Based on exhaustive critical research (Wikipedia) I have concluded that the vast majority of Crop Circles are man-made, but still really cool. Critics who get upset about trespassing and property damage are legally in the right. But the victims tend to make a lot of money offa being Crop Circled since tourists and researchers will pay a lot to investigate the phenomena. So you decide if they should really stop.
But the interesting thing is that a percentage of Crop Circles are not fully explicable according to human means. The nice, alien-friendly, and tax-deductible folks at BLT Research (hold the mayo) have scientific evidence about weird effects on plants and soil that can't adequately be explained. For example, expulsion cavities that occur in the plant stem nodes, which is a scientific way of saying the plants explode at the knuckles. That's awesome, and hard to humanly replicate without MIT-built microwave emitters. See the site for other weird stuff.
So, Crop Circles: I'm skeptical with a shot of agnostic. I'm prepared to believe in the natural explanations. But they don't yet appear complete.
The challenge would presumably be to find or produce Crop Circles without geometric form in fields without tractor lines.
Jump-start your own continued education on the YoobTube here.
For some time now I've had the feed from Compass Direct News, a scrupulous watchdog entity that monitors the persecuted church.
If you check blogs at all or subscribe to any feeds whatsoever please add Compass Direct to your lists. (Feed) I've become a less complacent Christian as a result of their updates. Nearly all reports come from sharpest edge of the clash. The feed also appears in the sidebar of this blog.
A recent heart-wrencher is here. Imagine wondering if your daughters are alive because you converted to Christianity and your dead wife's Muslim relatives enlisted government support to abduct said daughters. Or don't imagine, I certainly can't.
See my next post for the best articulation I can muster of the conflict between liberal Christians and persecuted Christians.
2 news posts in 2 days, who knew[s]?
France isn't slowing down on its antagonism of Iran.
Given my limited understanding of French population and culture these days, it seems more than possible that a French military campaign against an Islamic opponent could spark civil war between loyalists, pacifists, fundamentalists, and the devout of more than one religion.
I have no idea how those subsets would divide and align, but violence, and perhaps extended organized violence, seems a probable outcome of the present administration's efforts.
Which I suppose might mean Europe, the EU, and the Middle East could all blow up. Surely we must expect Antichrist to poke his head up at any time?
Well, hopefully not Antichrist, but the conditions all of a sudden look ripe for yet another huge-scale clash of West and Middle East, and this time the conflict could include a heckuva lot more warfare on the turf of Western Europe.
Joips, Scoob! It would be nice to learn that I'm way over-imagining the possibilities here.
I'm in coursework on the ethical issues of human life.
The technological considerations are considerable (hyuk).
Moreover, solving the ethical problems and claiming any moral high ground, assuming that's possible, isn't sufficient. Example: I might conclusively demonstrate it is wrong to genetically screen out and destroy abnormal children in utero, but that demonstration of rightness is unlikely sufficient to change societal law or behavior.
Technological advancement is a beast, our collective conscience and mores are not at all collective, legislative wield is anything but wieldy on such issues.
The sanctity of life is something that good Christians have always endorsed. Bp. Tom Wright makes the point that one way early Christians drew attention from skeptics was by attending to life: Christians did not expose infants (especially infant girls), the starving and sick were taken in and taken care of, lives were laid down that others might live and not the other way around.
In the face of overwhelming technological amorality, human dignity seems pretty up for grabs. I think though that once again Christians will have the opportunity to show emphatically that life matters and that it is good that you exist.
Churches must embrace our modern foundlings, must carry children to term no matter what, must show by example that all are welcome and fully-included members in the body of Christ. Success in such commitments is the kind of unequivocal behavior that cannot help but draw the attention of a world so desperately needing moral high ground to climb upon. In such a way the world can be changed. It's happened before.
My grave concern is that disrespect for human dignity is much closer to the belief and practice of churchdom than we would like to believe, let alone practice. Lord have mercy.
This story is one for which I have neither a thoughtful response nor an easy emotion.
Is the world getting saner or no?
Is France now worried about oil supply?
Is Sarkozy a hombre?
I don't follow politics or news much, but this is quite a headline to wake up to on a Monday morning.
Apparently Billy Jack the character has been co-opted into a campaign against all things present-administration.
Which is too bad, because in general I'm a staunch proponent of campy martial arts (Billy Jack is the muse of crescent kicks!) but an opponent of co-opting entertainment to discredit political entities even if they are discreditable. Alas: http://www.billyjack.com/
As my friend Phil says, support the band Arctic Monkeys just their opinion: "There's more important people who can have an opinion. Why does it make us have an opinion because we're in a band?"
I don't even know who they are and I like them for admitting that musicians are excessive carbonators. Article here.
Abstaining from judgment about the subject, I love the subtitle on this article.
Actually, I tried to think of something to say about Live Earth and failed.
This San Jose news story indicates exactly why people like me think free-market economics are a good idea.
I don't know much about economics. All I see is that the union and lobby-ridden state was hoping to fix this overpass for $20 million and an open-bid contractor thinks it's possible to do it before June 28 for more like 5-6 million (including up to $5 million in "git 'er done" incentives).
I commuted the LA and OC freeways for two years. I don't know why it takes the state years and years to build an overpass. I suspect monopolobby unionists are the reason.
Who suffers? Commuters and tax-payers, but certainly not the out-of-shape guys in orange vests who are paid very well to block miles upon miles of lanes upon lanes for years upon years so they can maybe get some work done during the hours defined as "rush".
Hey CalTrans, since I know you're reading this space, how about making every free-way project open-bid. It worked for emergency repairs after the last major earthquake, remember? Everything got fixed under budget months ahead of time. That wasn't so bad. It sure beats the 50-year plan for revamping the 55. Or the 405. Or the 5.
That came out kind of strong. Apparently I am orange-cone-scarred for life. Maybe I could sue somebody in a monopolobby. Any venture capitalists out there want to stake a lawsuit against a guy in an orange vest? The odds are pretty good he's not doing anything else at the moment.
Previously I posted that Anglican dialogue is impossible.
Probably it gets stickier. Someone I am unable to contact asserted to me that belief is a matter of heart commitment and must not be confused with assent to doctrine. Marcus Borg is the cited authority. Apparently heart-yeas are very Greek, very Latin, and very modern. I've survived a respectable dose of Classics and the suggestion in that context is new to me. I'm hoping to scope out Borg in the liberry tomorrow.
(If my last name was Borg I wouldn't be working up anhistorical Jesii, I'd be doing my best to prove how futile resistance really is, but that's a separate subject.)
I don't get to have many real conversations about such Borgish subjects. I disagree with my reparteer. Per my understanding we would be not only reduced to duelling with nerf-sabres but duelling without reason or a reason, and conflict cannot be resolved.
If that all seems esoteric but you still read this far (probably having legitimately rolled your eyes several times), I'm hoping only to draw out the one I want to talk with. There is a small chance s/he has clicked to here. Follow up would be great but not in an endless comment thread.
I hadn't heard of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) as such. Forbes' last issue had a good cover story about the subject if you're a hack when it comes to psychology, and I am.
CBT is a psychological practice that treats persons and problems in the present. The goal is to treat conditions in 10-20 sessions through behavior analysis and modification. Freud's couch is out the window. I heard years ago that insurance companies quit paying for Freudian psychoanalysis but this is even further reactive. Is Psychology getting over Freud?
Evidence is mounting that CBT can be effective for everything from insomnia to fear of heights to eating disorders, and the proponents claim their results are better than those of psychotherapy and antidepressants.
Is it a silver bullet? Well, insurance companies are happier about paying for it. Skeptics say you can't resolve pathologies or neurosies with psycho-bandaids. Fair enough. On the other hand I find something appealing about the prospect of dealing with something and getting on with life if that's at all possible, and I suspect that an awful lot of things can just be dealt with.
I'm interested in the dynamic as someone who hopes to expend a lot of pastoral effort hearing confession and giving counsel. How far can a kick in the pants get somebody? Hopefully a long way.
The Forbes article is here but unfortunately not free. It's the 04/09 issue if you can get it at a liberry. I don't know of a responsible article from the opposite perspective but would be interested to read one.
