I don't know if it's real
But I'm gonna laugh for weeks if they find it

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Authorities began searching the jungles of southern Malaysia on Friday for the mythical "Bigfoot" following a reported sighting of three giant human-like beasts, officials said.

Wildlife authorities may set up cameras in the 309 sq.mile Endau Rompin National Park in Johor state to see if the creatures do exist, they said.

Park director Hashim Yusof ventured into the jungle Friday to survey the site where three fish farm workers reportedly saw the beasts — two adults and a young one — last month...He said brown hair reeking of body odor was also reportedly retrieved nearby, and a broken tree branch at the site appeared to indicate the creatures were some 10 feet tall.

Ever since I saw "The Search for Bigfoot" as a kid I've been fascinated by the possibility, and more than a little surprised by the number of self-appointed experts who do not seem to understand that arguing from silence is a fallacy. Hey, they may be right, and all these persistent stories are just fantasies. But if they're not, I'm gonna laugh for a long time.

Not that it will really make any difference.

What's coming for GM

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp.'s shares touched their lowest price in more than twenty years on Thursday, in keeping with the rough road the world's largest automaker has seen in 2005 and uncertainty about the future.

An expected weak end to GM's U.S. sales year, a possible change in pension accounting that could erase most shareholder equity and investors taking their losses in the stock to offset gains in other investments drove GM shares to a new low on Thursday, analysts said.

For nearly 3/4 of a century, GM has been the world's largest automaker (soon to be overtaken by Toyota), was the largest corporation in America, and held court over an American industrial complex that was without peer in the world. It was often said (in a summary of the words of GM President cum Defense Secretary Charles Wilson) "What's good for GM is good for America."

Now what's coming for GM is coming for America.

The last sentence quoted above is so easy to read over and the bomb it holds is so easy to miss, so let me spell it out again: "a possible change in pension accounting that could erase most shareholder equity." What that means is, in short, because of a change in accounting rules, it could soon become obvious that after 3/4 of a century, the General Motors Corporation is worth exactly nothing. They are broke. The shares are worth nothing; the company is worth nothing.

The biggest issue with GM is one that most other industrial-era American companies share: pension promises that cannot be paid. They never could really pay people to not work 30 years after working 30 years, but the promises were made and now the bills are coming due. Even if GM sold off everything it owned, it could still not pay its promises. Just like the US itself.

GM's billions in debt obligations were reduced last year to junk bond status, signaling a sorry end of what was once the largest private employer in the world; all that avoids that end today is that the company has the cash to keep operating (though it lost four thousand million dollars this year) at present. But it can't borrow much more; the market already doubts it can pay back what it owes. With interest rates rising, the noose tightens. GM will end up bankrupt, sooner rather than later, and the pension mess, like that at NWA and Delta and an hundred other large companies, will be pushed off to Uncle Sam.

But Uncle Sam's time is coming, too. You see, Uncle Sam sets the accounting rules by which today GM looks valuable but tomorrow might not. It's the same GM, but Uncle Sam has the power to make GM look solvent. Just like Uncle Sam has the power to make himself look solvent. But it doesn't change the fact that he's not, and for much the same reason: promises that cannot and will not be kept.

For GM, the cash will run out and the noose will tighten, and what's coming for GM is coming for America. Uncle Sam can print up the cash to keep going, but he can't make it worth anything. He can change the rules, but he can't change reality.

The Most Important Reason

Mark Coppenger on why the church needs apologetics:

-- It keeps us honest -- we need to hear our critics.

I have a copy of an 1860 book, published in Louisville, entitled "A Bible Defense of Slavery." It reminds me of how a group of believers can cling to something really stupid and wrong for years and years. Insularity is treacherous. We need to listen to those who gainsay us. It can have a hygienic effect, helping us to sort out the defensible from the indefensible.

Coppenger's example is telling, because it's not Christianity at its core that changes. What changes, year to year and century to century, is our understanding (and often misunderstanding) of what it is. And a big part of that is because Christians are insular. And fearful. And proud.

Our insularity leads to our confusing culture with Christianity; being comfortably settled into habits and attitudes inherited from those around us, we naturally come to think of it as the way things ought to be and have always been. Following up on the topic below, drinking alcohol is the perfect example. Only in America, and in America, only in certain protestant denominations is alcohol even an issue, yet in those cases, it has been THE issue and the subject of countless weekly harrangues and sermons for nearly a century. In order to support Prohibition as a political platform, the scriptures were interpreted a unique way, just like to support the American institution of slavery, the scriptures were interpreted a certain way. In both cases, because we simply will not hear Christians who disagree with us or non-Christians who can in some cases see more clearly than us, we perpetuate error (or at least politics) all the time thinking it's Christianity. It's not. Christianity has bloody little to say about politics.

Our fear keeps us from truly examining issues on the off-chance we might discover something unpleasant or that others might think less of us. After all, no one wants to be accused of heresy or carnality or worldliness for pointing out the fact that the church (or what is far more likely, the culture within the church) has something wrong. Sometimes, the truth is not worth it to us. That's how Christians can wind up on the wrong end of the great issues of the day, like slavery, not only failing to discern right from wrong, but enlisting God's name and people on the side of wrong. We fail to listen to our opponents because we are afraid to find out that they might be right. We fail to stand up against error for fear that others will think we are less Christian than our group.

Our pride keeps us from admitting (at least in public) that we don't know everything, the Bible doesn't cover everything, and that our opponents are correct a lot more than we'd like to believe. Such pride leads us, as it leads everyone, into dishonesty. It happens all the time within the church (take a look at the KJV-only "debate" sometime, where the most dishonest arguments imaginable are foisted for the greater good) and when the world rightly calls us out as "lying for Jesus," we're often still too proud to admit it.

None of these problems are unique to Christianity or to Christians. Everyone is to some extent fearful and insular and proud. But they are a problem for church apologetics because they are not what we are supposed to be. We are called to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, and we will be effective as apologists only to the extent that we act Christian and teach a true Christianity.

A big part of understanding true Christianity is examination of our own attitudes and beliefs to see whence they arise and to make a conscious distinction between those which are truly Christian and those which are cultural. A bigger part is truly listening to those - especially other Christians - who disagree with us, whether friends from another denomination or authors from another century.

Most people are perfectly willing to accept the idea that the smartest people of past centuries were incorrect about a great many things. Yet they are not willing to imagine the same about themselves. But like most of our fellow men, the only people we are truly fooling is ourselves.

Despite Substantial Efforts

More than 30 people, mostly teenagers, were arrested Sunday during a rowdy Christmas night party at the Radisson Hotel in Rockland, police said.

Only two of the 32 people arrested were of legal drinking age, police said. Many of those arrested spent Christmas night in jail waiting for their parents to pick them up...

Studies say overall youth alcohol use has remained flat and at high levels over the past decade, despite substantial efforts in recent years to reduce youth access to alcohol at state and local levels.

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported that in 2003 nearly 11 million underage youth, ages 12 to 20, said they drank alcohol in the month prior to the survey.

Here's a famliar refrain: "despite substantial efforts." Surprisingly, if teens want to drink, they are going to drink. Even though the government has passed laws against it. Even though the government spends millions of dollars on TV ads. Even though swarms of officers are employed to ban any beverage that might have a picture of Santa on it in case some little kid might want to drink it.

It simply doesn't work. According to an official government website, 3/4 of young teens say alcohol is easy to get, the median age at which people begin drinking is 5 years below the legal age, and underage drinkers consume 1/5 of all liquor consumed in the US. I don't know if the numbers are correct, but if they are, then the futility of the government's drinking programs ought to be evident. If the numbers are correct, then it's time to repeal the drinking age and all alcohol regulations.

There appears to be nothing the government can do about teenage drinking - if there's one thing that makes me hopeful about the future of freedom, I suppose, it's the inability of government to get people to do what they want. The issue of whether, where, and how much kids should drink belongs where it has always belonged: between parents and those kids.

Pardon me for mocking

Britain and Sweden are the only European countries honouring their Kyoto commitments to cut greenhouse gasses, according to a think-tank report.

Although the US is portrayed as the ecological villain for refusing to sign up to the agreement, 10 out of the 15 European Union signatories - including Ireland, Italy and Spain - will miss their targets without urgent action, the Institute for Public Policy Research found...

Tony Grayling, the institute's associate director, said the world was near the point of no return on climate change. "We have little time left to start reducing global greenhouse gas emissions before irreparable damage is done. It is vital that EU countries keep their promises to cut pollution.

I've got just three words: "Not Gonna Happen." In fact, it was never gonna happen. Politicians want credit for good intentions, but with Europe reeling under the triple strains of a shrinking workforce, high social spending, and an aging population, there is no way pols are going to endanger their own jobs by voluntarily hurting their own economies. They might (ok, they will) sign promises to do so in order to give themselves a chance to demonize the US, but they won't actually voluntarily cut emissions.

Glad our Senate was wise enough to refuse to ratify this abomination in the first place.

Teddy Lied

Thus spake the littlest Kennedy:

Just this past week there were public reports that a college student in Massachusetts had two government agents show up at his house because he had gone to the library and asked for the official Chinese version of Mao Tse-tung's Communist Manifesto. Following his professor's instructions to use original source material, this young man discovered that he, too, was on the government's watch list.

Think of the chilling effect on free speech and academic freedom when a government agent shows up at your home -- after you request a book from the library.

You know the saddest thing is that Kennedy can't even get the little facts correct. Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848. Mao's quotation's are found in his "Little Red Book."

I just got a copy of the Little Red Book to go along with the bust of Mao I bought a few weeks back, and I didn't even get so much as a Christmas card from the MIBs. Maybe that's because the whole story was made up out of whole cloth. I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that liberals would lie in order to have something to complain about. Are there not enough real complaints to make?

The parallels between Kennedy's words and, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" are almost too delicious to to ponder. But for some reason I don't foresee moonbats with placards that say, "Teddy Lied" on them...

Merry Christmas

And there were in the same country shepherds in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And the angel of the Lord came to them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were afraid.

And the angel said unto them, "Have no fear, for I bring you good tidings of great joy for all people. For to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be your sign: you will find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger."

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men".

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, "Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing which has come to pass, which the Lord made known unto us."

And they came quickly and found Mary and Joseph, with the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.

Mommy look: it's the Breast Nazis

Massachusetts shows the way to the nursing state:

Got milk?

If you’re a new mother, you’d better.

Because beginning soon, hospitals will no longer be allowed to give free infant formula to mothers taking new babies home. Regulators want to promote breast-feeding, even if it means making Massachusetts the first state to ban the popular freebie...

“The issue here is really the promotion of breast feeding,” said Dr. Wanda Barfield of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

The issue is not breastfeeding; the issue is control, and it's hard to think of a better example of the innate totalitarianism of busybody government. Even if one supports breastfeeding there's something disconcerting about government banning the practice of hospitals distributing free alternatives to those who wish them. And it's ironic how those who find mothers competent to abort their children find them incompetent to choose their food.

The logical conclusion of government telling you that you can't do something because it's bad for you is that the government will eventually tell you that you must do something because it's good for you. As soon as the compulsory nanny state is turned loose, you will find thousands of Dr. Wandas to force you to eat right, excercise every day, and cut back on your twinkie consumption. Eventually we'll meet on the street every morning for "voluntary" calisthenics.

You won't be required to do it, of course. You just won't be allowed to have any food or medicine if you don't.

The Heartcry of the Modern Woman

Courtesy of Abigail von Munchausen:

Q: Several of my friends and I were bemoaning our status as single women in our late 20s/early 30s, and discussing an article we had read in the New York Times about how smart women are less likely to get married. We'd all like to find Mr. Wonderful and be married. But if we have to curtail our professional success, financial wherewithal and IQ to do it, how can a person even begin to do such a thing?

Maybe we'd be better off to take jobs as "administrators" in a large company somewhere and hope for the best.

Help, Abby! What's the answer for smart, fun women who have their acts together? How can we best poise ourselves to find true love while being true to ourselves?

Unsurprisingly, Abby's 3-part answer is rubbish:

1) "Eligible members of both sexes can be found in places of common interest" - yes, they can, except that unmarried men in their 30s are likely that way on purpose. The problem is not "finding" single men - doubtless these ladies know more than 1 or 2 - but finding men who are a) unmarried and want to be married; and b) worthy of marrying. The problem is that a) and b) become mutually exclusive as you get older. Men who are attractive and want to get married get married.

2) "I guarantee that if you don't take financial care of yourselves while you can, you will regret it later" - career is a long time, family time is not. If you want to spend your 20s establishing yourself in a career that will span a half-century, that's fine. But understand that if you're not married by 30, you're facing long odds if you want to marry someone your age and social station. Guys don't worry about it, because they generally don't expect their spouses to be "successful:" they expect them to be good wives and mothers. That's the reason that there are no tables full of 30-ish guys writing to Dear Abner about not getting married. Guys who want to get married get married.

If you raise a whole load of kids and start a career at 40, you'll still work it for 3 decades before you retire or 4 before you die. That's plenty of time for "success."

3) "stop reading defeatist newspaper and magazine articles." - bury your head in the sand. After all, it's certainly not a problem with anything you're doing or any choices you're making, right?

Look, here's the truth: Being "true to themselves", which today means telling themselves that they are smart and fun just as they are - though eventually it means dying alone with cats - is the thing that guarantees that these lovely and eligible women will still be eligible in the next decade and probably the one after that, because it results in obstinately clinging to mantras in the face of reality. The answer is not to be true to yourself; the answer is to change yourself. If you're not married after 10 years on the market, then what you're offering or the way in which you are offering it is not wanted. Dealing with that fact is the only thing that's going to change it.

Vox Day had a column a few months back which laid out 10 strategies for doing just that. Among them were insights like, "Make those potential long-term relationships your top priority" and "let everyone know that marriage and children is your ultimate goal."

In other words, you will find what you seek. If you simply go with the flow of postmodern maidenhood while writing letters about all the things you won't sacrifice for family, you'll most likely find yourself still hanging with strong independent (i.e. single and bitter) women when Saudi Arabia has its first woman president. If you make it a goal to seek marriage and family first, then that is most likely what you'll get, and there's plenty of time to have a successful and fulfilling career later.

Your choice, while you're young.

Christianity for Adults

A few weeks back (has it been that long?) I sparred with a young atheist named Aaron who used his "17 years as a fundamentalist" (coincidentally ending shortly after his 17th birthday) to show his familiarity with the Bible to try to show that Christians are ordered to literally slay their enemies. Of course, that familiarity did not include an understanding of either context or parable, but that's not really what the issue was. It was the fact that there is a Christianity for children and one for adults. And, unfortunately, many like Aaron (whether they remain Christians or not) never move from the former to the latter.

Such apparently write letters to Mark S., who runs the "Set Free from Jesus" site. And while the site could encourage many weeks of study, Mark hits on something that illustrates the above (page down to the sexy pic of Baal):

I get emails from Fundies who tell me that since I spend soooooo much time speaking out against something I don't believe exists (i.e. Biblegod), I must therefore deep down inside really do believe that Biblegod DOES exist, as "no one would spend time writing against things they don't really believe exist."

Following that line of "reasoning", then all the Gods and Goddesses (even the tree gods) mentioned in the Old Testament must also be real- at least as real as the god of the Bible who rails against them. Biblegod expends enormous amounts of time and energy speaking out against and battling Baal, Tammuz, Ishtar, and all the other gods of days gone by...

Thus this Fundy line of reasoning, rather than being some "silver bullet" to defeat Atheism, actually opens up a veritable Pandora's Box of pagan gods with which to haunt and infest both the Christian worldview AND the space under their beds at night!

Mark is absolutely correct, right down to his title: "Polytheism is Correct"

Of course, the first time one accuses Christians of being polytheists, the Christian is guaranteed to recoil in horror. After all, we all know that Christianity is one of the "great monotheistic religions," meaning that they believe in only one God. But it's not so simple as that.

According to Merriam-Webster, monotheism is "the doctrine or belief that there is but one God" and polytheism is "belief in or worship of more than one god."

Christians are both. How can this be? How can there be one God but many gods? Going back to our trusty dictionary, we'll note that "god" has more than one definition:

1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as... the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshiped as creator and ruler of the universe...

2 : a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality

Christians are monotheistic in that they believe in one God (capitalized) who is worshipped as creator and ruler. However, according to Christian theology, there are also beings "believed to have more than natural attributes." There are, in fact, supernatural beings that may control a particular aspect or part of reality.

There is "the god of this world," (2Cor 4:4) who blinds the minds of (i.e. controls to an unknown extent) humans who do not serve God. There are devils (1Cor 10:20) who receive the sacrifices that the pagan Romans offered to their gods. There are those beings whom the Bible refers to as principalities (c.f. Eph 6:12) who are non-physical (i.e. spiritual) powers in the world. There may even be (depending upon how one reads Daniel) principalities with authority over certain physical nations or groups of people (Dan 10:13). One of them, known as Satan, offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worship.

So what? Thus lies the difference between children's Christianity and the real thing. Kiddie Christianity sees God as all there is outside this physical world. He's a kindly old man who loves his wayward children, counts up good and bad deeds, and has a naughty and nice list as if he were some cosmic Santa Claus. Christians, in this scheme, are of course on the good list, and if everyone else would just be good children, they could get on it too. And while there is nothing in it that is demonstrably false, it is not near enough to reality to be called 'true' in any real sense.

Adult Christianity is polytheistic in this sense: there are gods and they are real. Being non-physical, they are of course not testable by science or sensually noted except on rare occasions (all-there-is-is-matter materialists discount them completely, like a man who denies the existence of beauty because it won't fill his gas tank). But they have an impact on nations and on individuals (who can but see the footprints of Moloch all over our modern society?)

The fact that the gods of the past were and are real explains one of the hardest notions for Christians to get past their little blue bonnets: our warfare is spiritual, not physical. It is certainly not legal. You cannot turn a fallen world into the kingdom of God by passing laws or beating up professors. You can't get it by killing Muslims. As Paul said, "The weapons of our warfare are not the world's weapons." We are not going to win the world by fighting it on its own terms. This world belongs to another god. We may save some individuals from his control and fate, but we will not wrest this world from his grasp. I am absolutely astonished at the number of preachers who find swimming pools and movies to be "worldly" but will look to the political process to save the nation.

But though polytheistic in the sense that it recognizes that there are supernatural powers that influence and in some sense rule reality, adult Christianity is also monotheistic. There is one God who is the creator and is worthy of obedience and worship, and he is the only God who can rescue one completely from the influences of the gods who have real power and real authority in this fallen world. His solutions do not lie in a supreme court case or a constitutional amendment. They lie in a contrite heart that loves his neighbor more than himself. It is a simple solution but not an easy one, because it requires us to change rather than changing others.

Quote of the Day

"The Pennsylvania ruling [barring the teaching of "intelligent design" in science classes] will do nothing to end the battle over the teaching of human origins that has plagued public schools since the Scopes trial of 1925. It, and all the other cultural and religious 'school wars' that divide our nation, will rage on unless we do something about their root cause: our one-size-fits-all government school system."
-- Andrew J. Coulson and Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute.

Hat tip: WSJ

Par for the Course

About those GOP budget cuts:

The House was headed toward passing the defense bill and the budget bill overnight, and Republican leaders in that chamber said the budget deal was a major accomplishment.

"House Republicans promised the American people that we would restrain federal spending and reform government programs," said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican.

The bill slows the growth of Medicaid and Medicare. Still, some conservatives were irked to find that Mr. Frist had included nearly $4 billion in new spending to what was supposed to be the budget-cutting bill.

Apparently the Senate Majority Leader didn't get that memo. While House Republicans were busy "slowing the growth" (the WashTimes gets an "A" for telling the truth), the Senate GOP was busy sneaking in four thousand million dollars in new spending.

Has anyone wondered how if budgets are being "slashed" and "decimated" we still end up with more spending year after year, they should ask the Senate Republican Leadership.

But hey, at least they managed to sneak in a clause that would allow us to drill ANWR. Not a total loss, just a 75% loss. Par for the GOP course.

Dies alone with cats

More on the Democrats' efforts to alienate the voting majority:

A political parody of the ichthys, the Christian fish symbol, has put Washington state Democrats in some hot water and cast a spotlight upon a Mount Vernon activist who wants marijuana legalized.

Allison Bigelow did not create the facetious fish, but her company, Reefer Magnets, owns the copyright and sells it on the Internet...

This latest ichthys parody was created by a Seattle activist who wanted not to be named. He said he feared for the safety of his cats if the controversy grew out of control.

He said the magnets were meant to spur a discussion about hypocrisy in politics, and he hopes the recent media attention helps.

Not that I'm opposed to legalizing marijuana, but those who think (and say) that, "we wouldn’t be such a warring people if we used more cannabis and used less alcohol," are obviously (and perhaps a little too) deep into the ditch weed.

Either way, it doesn't help the Washington Democrats, who sold the stickers on their site and then when it hit the press, hit reverse and got rid of them. What kind of a business recalls its products as soon as millions of potential customers discover it?

Look, if that's your message, then have the stones to stick with it, but realize that selling stickers designed to offend the majority of voters in this country might not be the fastest way to political power.

If it's not their message, then it just remains another indication that as bad as the GOP is, the Dems are not exactly offering up a competent alternative here...

Bad Santas

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus costumes, many of them drunk, rampaged through New Zealand's largest city, robbing stores and assaulting security guards, police said Sunday.

The rampage, dubbed "Santarchy" by local newspapers, began early Saturday afternoon when the men, wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes, threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an Auckland overpass, said Auckland Central Police spokeswoman Noreen Hegarty. She said the men then rushed through a central city park, overturning garbage containers, throwing bottles at passing cars and spraying graffiti on buildings...

Alex Dyer, a spokesman for the group, said Santarchy was a worldwide movement designed to protest the commercialization of Christmas.

Actually, it sounds like an excuse for antipodeans to get drunk, but hey, what do I know?

Spike G Gets His Props

Monthly silver column posted at Silver Seek:

The shadowy and legendary metals investor known as “Spike G” sent me an article this week, one of many he emails to his trusted inner circle on an almost daily basis these days. Though most of his offerings tend to be of the “Go Gold!” school of thought (tempered always by his sage commentary) this one was different: rather than explaining why gold was on the cusp of a glorious rise, it congratulated the investor on enjoying a generational blowoff top and urged him to book his profits in hope of another one in the next decade sometime. Though I don’t recall the author (and it really doesn’t matter; no one knows the future, he can only reason his way there) I’ve seen the argument before: in short, the charts of today mimicked the charts of the mid ‘90s and history had repeated itself. The run was over.

“Rubbish,” says I...

There are no stupid questions
so long as they are honestly asked.

Regarding home-schooling, how could parents of a teenager consider themselves capable of giving their son or daughter anywhere near the same benefits available at area middle schools and high schools in the state of Maine?

Keeping a kid in school and working with the person when he or she needs help is what raising kids is all about. So why home-school? I don't understand.

John Young, Gardiner

I was not surpised to find this letter titled "Home-schooling not sufficient for teens," as if merely asking a question is proof of anything, but I do take issue with the statement, "Keeping a kid in school and working with the person when he or she needs help is what raising kids is all about." Is it? I always thought parenting was about helping children grow into mature and responsible adults, and in that case, home schooling not only is "sufficient" for many teens, but exceptional.

The reason is that home schooling prepares teens for the real world far better than traditional school. Where in the real world will the kid find himself in an age-segregated group that moves to the sound of timed bells, studies subjects that are divorced from one another, and sits quietly while a teacher pours knowledge into them?

Home schooling, on the other hand, teaches a child to work with people of varying ages or by himself, to plan and to study according to his own schedule, and to take responsibility for his own learning, a situation far closer to reality than the artificial world of traditional school. By the time a home-schooled kid has reached the teen years, he is likely to have taken charge of his own education (mine did) and is far more likely to be developing extracurricular hobbies and interests than his high school peers.

For example, 3 of our 5 kids were home schooled. The first completed a private, secular, online high school in 18 months at age 15. She completed an associate's degree at her local junior college (the only "classroom" she had ever been in) and moved into her own apartment before her 18th birthday. While her peers were completing high school, she was working on a double major at the state university and had a full-time job. Our second, at 16, is completing completing his last class at the same high school and has already started college. He'll attend full-time on a music scholarship starting in the spring and will receive his associate's degree about the time his peers get their high school diploma. He also runs a corporation part time and works afternoons at a second job. The third has just begun high school and will likely finish it a full year ahead of his peers. They "school" about 1/3 of the time of their peers and accomplish twice as much.

Each is responsible for his own education, asking mom and dad for help only when he needs it (seldom) and relying on his online teachers for assistance, while being responsible for getting work done on time, choosing classes, and fulfilling the requirements for a high school diploma on his own.

The "proof" as it were is not in the artificial expectations of those who have never homeschooled, but in the kids who are products of it. There's a reason that they excel in spelling bees and science fairs (usually beating kids 2-3 years older than them) and that reason is that the freedom involved in homeschooling creates an environment where most kids thrive.

The parent's primary educational responsibility is not to teach, but to instill a love of learning. Then it's up to the teenager to make whatever he can out of that.

Just like the real world.

No, your government has nothing better to do

(CBS4) BELCHERTOWN, MA The state of Connecticut is banning sales of a couple holiday beers with Santa on the label.

“Seriously Bad Elf” beer is a British import, that’s distributed by a company in Belchertown, Massachusetts. Its label shows an elf with a slingshot firing Christmas ornaments at Santa's sleigh.

"Warm Welcome" is another beer distributed by Shelton Brothers. Its label features an image of Santa dropping down a chimney into a fire.

Connecticut state regulations bar alcohol advertising with images, like Santa, that might appeal to children.

The beer's distributor, Shelton Brothers, has enlisted the help of the American Civil Liberties Union in fighting the ban.

Whatever one thinks of the power of governments to ban otherwise legal commerce "for the children," I think it's pretty funny that a beer distributor is set up in "Belchertown."

The Vision Thing

A great JS Mill quote from this week's Federalist Patriot:

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

It is a fact that there are things worth fighting for. There are things worth dying for. PJ O'Rourke once wrote a hilarious and insightful book called "Give War a Chance" and sometimes I think we have to do just that. Freedom is one of those things, and FedPat, being a good Conservative publication, doesn't pass up the opportunity to rightly sic Mill on their anti-war oponents.

But they have strange minds that can see so clearly Mill's implications on their opponents' argument while so completely missing Mill's point concerning their own, in the second sentence: Those who prioritize safety first can never be free. And I have noticed that these frightened little birds are the same ones who call for more laws, more centralization, more power to the government. But it's not frightened liberals. It's conservatives like the Federalist Patriot:

In the Senate, debate rages over the Patriot Act, and several Democrats want another three months to discuss the ramifications of renewing its sunset provisions. Majority Leader Bill Frist has said that the time to vote is now, and we here at The Patriot agree with him. Delaying such a decision only puts our country at greater risk...

FedPat has consistently supported the Patriot Act and innumerable expansions of federal spying power for the simple reason that we must have safety first - well, that and the fact that a good conservative Republican president can be trusted to never abuse such power. They never bother to say that safety first means freedom second.

While accusing the Democrats and anti-war left of being "miserable persons" who would rather have peace than freedom, they show by their own words that they are persons who would rather have safety than freedom.

Mill's words are meaningless unless we assume that freedom is worth having even if it means we are less safe and even if it means we must fight to keep it. It seems to me that while the conservatives can clearly see the anti-war mote in their opponent's eye, there's a safety-first plank in their own that goes unnoted.

At least they're good for something

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate on Friday rejected attempts to reauthorize several provisions of the nation’s top anti-terror law as infringing too much on Americans’ privacy, dealing a major defeat to President Bush and Republican leaders.

In a crucial vote early Friday, the bill’s Senate supporters were not able to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a threatened filibuster by Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and their allies. The final vote was 52-47.

Thank God for small majorities. Being useless, idea-less, and rudderless themselves, the only value Democrats have is in stopping the GOP. Were the Dems in power, Patriot would have been their idea. Being out of power, they oppose it and raised enough of a stink that it just might expire. Attaboy to them.

Of course, I don't expect this victory to be permanent or to stop El Presidente. Either the Dems will sell out for some home town pork or Bush will simply sign an executive order giving the government the necessary power to do what he wants.

The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either.
- Ben Franklin.

The world is a very cool place

Even before I found this report (which I haven't finished), it was a pretty cool day:

I discovered that Winamp offers an all-Metallica radio station. It's been on for 2 days and I'm not sick of it yet. How cool is that?

As I was walking across campus to get some lunch, I saw high in one of the building's windows a huge sign that read, "God Bless Our Troops." I can find at least a half dozen things right there guaranteed to make the SOMA boys soil their Star Wars Underoos.

But on the uncool side:

"We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of brutal dictator," Bush said. "It is to leave a free and democratic Iraq in his place."

Never guess where El Presidente gave the speech: the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. How apt. Back during the first incarnation of Wilson, Republicans had the good sense to realize the futility of trying to implement democracy by force. Now they climb all over one another for the chance to try where he failed.

Oh, and another all-time high trade deficit today, not that there's any relationship between the two.

Other than that our meddlesome foreign policy and insane fiscal policy are both ultimately blameable on Wilson, I suppose.

Copyright 2005 El Borak, inc. Makers of Nature's Bounty brand owl dumplings and baby seal burgers. Hey, if we weren't supposed to eat animals, they wouldn't be made of meat.

The love of mothers contrasted

There's an interesting story in the Gospel of Luke:

Satan brought Jesus to Jerusalem and set him on a pinnacle of the temple. He said to Him, "If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down from here, for it is written, "He shall give his angels charge over you to keep thee, and in their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.'"

And Jesus answering him said, "It is said, You shall not tempt the Lord your God'".

It's rather odd that Jesus did not say that Satan was wrong in saying that angels would protect him, but rather that it was unwise to put himself in a situation where it would be necessary.

I'm reminded of that today:

SILOAM SPRINGS, Ark. - Shayna Richardson was making her first solo skydiving jump when she had trouble with her parachutes and, while falling at about 50 mph, hit face first in a parking lot. Although badly hurt, she survived — and doctors treating her injuries discovered she was pregnant.

Four surgeries and two months later, Richardson said she and the fetus are doing fine.

"Just this last week we went and saw the doctor and we've got arms, we've got legs. We've got a full face. The baby is moving around just fine. The heart rate looks good. So not only did God save me but he spared this baby," she said.

Here's a woman who believes God saved her, and I'm tempted to believe that such is the case. Sometimes He does, and things that should kill us do not - I believe it not because I can prove it, but because I was also involved in such a fall (that also went wrong) and might have killed me. I wasn't skydiving: I was jumping off a pretty high cliff into a lake, 2 days by canoe from the nearest phone. I thought I was dead, prayed my last prayer, then missed the rocks by inches. Sometimes God saves us, but I don't know that I ever did that again. I would not do it today. Life involves risk, but it's not too smart to voluntarily put yourself into a position where the only thing between you and death is God's saving hand.

So what does Richardson do?

Richardson said her due date is June 25. She plans to make her next parachute jump in August.

Hey, it's her life, and this may sound cold, but if she smears herself all over the ground next time the only one I'll grieve for is a kid who grows up without a mom because the latter didn't have a clue.

I'm glad there are some mothers out there who care enough for their kids to think of them first:

A mother who found out she had cancer after becoming pregnant sacrificed her life for her unborn baby by refusing an abortion and chemotherapy, a British newspaper reported. Devout Catholic Bernadette Mimura, known as Milai, shunned the potentially life-saving treatment because doctors told her it would kill the child, the Northern Echo regional daily reported Friday.

The 37-year-old, a native of the Philippines who lived near Stockton-on-Tees in northeast England with her British partner, Adam Taylor, survived long enough to see the birth of their son, Nathan. But soon after seeing him baptized, she was transferred to a hospice and died about a week later. "Being a Catholic, for her abortion was out of the question," Mr. Taylor told the newspaper. "It was a tough decision, but the decision was we could not give up on Nathan."

The boy, now 4 months old, was premature but was born fit and healthy.

One gave all for her child, one was given a second chance to do so and has apparently decided to leap from the temple anyway.

Not much of a surprise

You are a Social Liberal (68% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (88% permissive) You are best described as a: Libertarian Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Copyright 2005 El Borak, inc. Makers of HaliToesies brand carbon socks for stinky feet. Maybe now your dog will get your slippers for you...

An Humbling Experience

What follows was meant to be simply a "Thank you" in the comments, but somehow grew until it needed an entry of its own.

Mitzibel writes:

An excellent, and humbling, blog, Bill. Kudos.

Thanks, Misty. It wasn't meant to be humbling but just to express a frustration: the only group that displays the "zeal of the newly converted" worse than teenaged Christians is newly "de-converted" teenaged atheists. Call it "the zeal of the newly de-converted," I guess.

These kids fall into the same funnytrap I fell into when I was just a baby Jesus Freak. About 6 months after I became a Christian, I read a book (I forget the name of it now...it was one of dozens of the same kind out at the time) on the Dead Sea Scrolls that completely destroyed my faith, and I could have ended up like Aaron.

This was before the scrolls were "leaked" (praise God for scholars who eschew secrecy) and the whole book was exposed as speculation based on preliminary translations of literally a handful of scrolls. The hundreds that eventually came out told a different story.

Today, having studied in reality (not just memorized scripture, but studied culture, languages, and commentary) for longer than Aaron claims to have been a fundamentalist, I can see that the book was simply one fatuous speculation based on pre-conceived but deeply held notions. But at the time, it was a guy with a PhD speaking, so it was like the voice of God (didn't having a PhD mean you knew everything?) Besides, he was a minister, though I didn't know what the Unitarians were at the time.

Short, short version: in my naivete', I said to myself, "Well, there goes Christianity," not realizing that 2000 years of history and real scholarship could not really be overturned just because some guy had a PhD. Luckily (not really luck, though) I spent the next 6 months reading literally every night until the sun came up... sleep till 11a, class till 4p, work till 11p, read till 6a ... everything theological/historical/archaeological I could get my hands on...the Joco Librarians probably got sick of seeing me.

By the end of that period, I could identify every error in the guy's logic, every unwarranted assumption, every argument based on presupposition. Then I took on "The Jesus Scroll," "The Passover Plot," and other works of the same nature, including one of my all-time favourites, "Holy Blood Holy Grail". That latter truly (no lie) remains one of my favourite books, but I was not surprised to find that a decade after it appeared, it turned out that it was completely based on a French prank that the authors did not see at the time.

Through the experience of having my faith shattered through naivete and using that to learn rather than to turn, I eventually reached an understanding of the works of God not likely to be overturned by speculation. I learned to differentiate between evidence and presupposition. In short, I grew up, and the baby Christianity I held was replaced by something far deeper. But one way or the other, it needed to be replaced.

I can't prove, but truly believe, that my experience was not unique. When I first became a Christian, God was so real. I heard Him and I saw Him and I felt him every day. But some months later there was nothing left, and it caused me to wonder if I was simply crazy - of course, it didn't help that many of my closest friends thought I was exactly that. I went through a desert. God was not there. And it was in that time that I faced the temptation Aaron apparently succumbed to.

Jesus described it in a parable that I missed at the time, the parable of the sower. Short version, the sower, Jesus, plants the word of God in hearts and then watches idly for a season to see what grows. It's a soil test - maybe weeds grow and maybe nothing grows and maybe crops grow but maybe they are destroyed - and God was testing my "soil" to see if it was deep enough. I thank Him that it was.

As a guy in my early 20s, I didn't have nearly enough experience, knowledge, or wisdom to truly understand the depth of God's work, but I didn't know it. I knew everything I knew but I thought that was everything there was. I could have ended up like Aaron (hell, I WAS Aaron in my late teens...if God existed, He was irrelevant) because I didn't recognize that my perspective was myopic: I didn't know what I didn't know.

All I know now is what I don't know, but that makes all the difference.

That's why I don't mock Aaron, and I almost laughed when he though I would "attack" him. Such is the farthest thing from my mind. I've read the guys he finds so persuasive, but the difference is that I have read both sides. If I feel anything for him, it's pity.

That period of study (which never really ended, though it has, in all honesty, waxed and waned in fervency over 2 decades) convinced me that belief is a matter of the will, just as Jesus said it would be. As Pascal wrote, "The heart has reasons that reason doesn't understand," or as Simon and Garfunkle put it, "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." We will hear what we desire in our hearts to hear. Whether that's the voice of God or of something else, we will hear it. And we will believe it.

That's why Jesus makes belief not a matter of signs or evidence but a matter of choice. We will choose to believe Him (in which case we will receive all the evidence we need, as 'doubting' Thomas did) or we can choose not to (in which case we will receive evidence that will confirm us in that as well).

I'll not attack Aaron; such would do neither of us any good. He's entered a period where he'll discover either his own naivete (the unparalleled gift of youth) or everything he needs to convince himself that many of the the finest minds of the past two millennia were wrong about the single question that matters most: What shall I then do with this man Jesus which is called Christ?

Aaron has decided to walk away. The soil test failed; nothing grows there. I can't attack him for that, I can only grieve, silently, and hope that a divine gardener can bring him some mulch before he lives out his entire life as a man who disbelieves in God but burns in anger at Him anyway.

Sorry, didn't mean to turn this into a sermon...sometimes I just get carried away like that.

We'll be at T-mum's for New Year's. Will we see you and Trey there?

Copyright 2005 EL Borak, inc. Makers of Get a Long Little Doggie brand prods and branding irons for dachsunds. Oblong ‘em up and move ‘em out.

Suffer the Children, for of such is the Kingdom of God

Aaron Kinsey mistakes familiarity for expertise:

You are wrong. Jesus did in fact threaten those who didnt believe. Jesus said that those who would not want to follow Him should be brought before Him and slain. I am quite familiar with the Bible and what Jesus says in it. I was a fundamentalist Christian for 17 years. Nice try though.

Of course, my first question was, "I suspect your 17 years as a fundamentalist ended on your 17th bday, huh?" His answer was instructive:

Close. I was about 17 and a half. Whats your point? Are you setting up an ad hominem attack in an attempt to disprove my claims? I can see it now: "God must exist because Aaron deconverted when he was 17!"

Sigh. There is a child's Christianity, and an adult's one, and the former, while possibly making one "quite familiar" with the Bible, does not allow one to speak with authority on it. It's not unlike economics or mathematics, I suppose. Using a checkbook for 17 years does not make one competent to speak on the Labor Theory of Value, nor does completion of Everyday Senior Math allow one to speak with authority on the Calculus. Familiarity is not expertise.

This is not to belittle the child's understanding, because Jesus said that of such is the Kingdom of God. One can be a child and a Christian, because one is not required to be an expert on Christianity in order to be a Christian. But I suspect that most Christians (pet peeve alert) never grow past a childish understanding and either "deconvert" like Aaron and think that their understanding of Christianity allows them to interpret 1st Century Jewish rhetoric, or they carry on as Christians, certain that their ability to wield verses about makes them experts.

In Aaron's case, the problem is simple. He has failed to note the existence and use of parable. He has taken "literally" a command given by an actor in a parable and applied it to a speaker whose audience clearly understood it differently. Then when asked how that audience reacted, he changed the subject. By failing to understand the culture and rhetoric of Jesus, he has failed to understand His words and therefore the very nature of Christianity. Because he was "familiar" with the Bible, he used his "17 years" as a basis for a claimed expertise that didn't exist. Many, many adult Christians do the same (Luke 19, anyone?) and they are no more expert than he.

The Bible, like any other piece of ancient literature (or any piece of literature, period) cannot be understood by "reading it like a newspaper," a tactic that critics and Christians alike occasionally recommend. It's not a newspaper. It is history, philosophy, erotic poetry, prophecy, theology, rhetoric and logic, biography, law, and covenant. It contains parables and proverbial wisdom and sarcasm and idiom and symbolism, and one who does not take the time or effort to grasp those will never come to a proper understanding of it. One who is not willing to understand basic literary divices of ancient culture will be forever locked in a world where "Jesus loves me, this I know" is the highest theological ratiocination available. Is that enough to make one a Christian? Yes. Is it enough to allow one to speak intelligently about the Bible? Not remotely.

One who reads the Bible like a newspaper will never be anything but a baby Christian, or worse, when one grows sufficiently mature to reject a Christianity meant for 5-year-olds as insufficient and unsophisticated, one is likely to become a baby ex-Christian. A 5-year-old's Christianity IS insufficient for an adult, just like a 5-year-old's mathematics is insufficient for an adult. The solution is not to reject mathematics; it is to get serious about studying mathematics.

There's a reason that most religious discussion is drivel, and that reason is that both sides are either defending or attacking a 5-year-old's Christianity, a caricature of the real thing, and not the real thing itself.

Paul told Timothy to study to show that he was a workman who could rightly piece out the scriptures to those he taught. Memorizing verses is not study. Wielding verses is not study. Certainly reading the Bible like a newspaper, divorcing sentences from their grammatical and historical context, is not study.

And if you aren't willing to study, at least be willing to shut up. It's better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. I'm pretty sure that's in the Bible somewhere...

Copyright 2005 El Borak, inc. Makers of Faux Pearls, Turin Shrouds, Quality Manhole Covers, String Cheese, Counterfeit Canadian Dollars, Japes, Puns, and Irrelevant Comparisons, and confusing Florida ballots.

PQ gets me thinking

One of my favourite jousting partners, Patrick Quinn, weighs in on the Mirecki beating:

It is not a "mistake" to believe a victim crime report. It is a mistake to wear ideological blinders so heavy that the assumption is made that the victim is lying on the basis of what the unwashed masses believe to be the victim's political or religious beliefs.

You don't doubt Mirecki on the basis of any "facts." You doubt him because he thinks differently than you.

Is he right? I know that's the popular version of what went on over there, and a lot of people would like to believe that. I wish I could, but you see, I was... Oops, sorry, had a Sam Kinison moment. If you haven't seen "Back to School," see it.

Now, PQ also accused me of waffling, to which I plead guilty. I have no direct evidence that would suggest that Mirecki is lying or staged the assault, and I'm not one who's going to make that accusation without such evidence. However, I stand by my statement that this fails the smell test. When the first reports came out, I didn't question it, because I believe such a beating is possible. If it occurred, then the perpetrators ought to be caught and flogged. They'll get no mercy from me. But there are enough things about the story that don't add up that I'll admit that I am skeptical of it. Eric Weslander did most of the reporting, and he either did a very poor job (which I doubt, having followed his stuff since I was in Topeka) or there's a lot of stuff missing.

So let's walk through it and see what's missing.

The Story: (stuff in quotes will be direct citations from the three stories here and here and here)

About 6:40am on December 5th, Mirecki was driving to breakfast when he noticed he was being tailgated on a rural road. He pulled off and a truck pulled off behind him. He got out of his car. Two men got out of the truck and beat him while mentioning the controversy surrounding his cancelled ID class. He drove himself to the hospital.

Good story, but there are a few problems with it. Well, they are rather questions which, if answered, I'm willing to accept as a reasonble (and believable) account of events.

The first is a question: How did they find him? At 6:40am, it's dark, so for the men to know that Mirecki was driving the car, they would have had to either scouted him out or simply saw him on the road. In the first case, they would have had to have waited all that cold December night, and how would they know he was going to breakfast in the morning by himself? In the second case, they were also driving around rural Lawrence and happened to recognize his car. Neither one sounds very convincing to me. One of the arguments for Mirecki not getting a good description is that it was dark. But if it was so dark, how did the men note him?

The second question is, "What was he doing?" According to one report, he was "driving to breakfast." According to a second (phone interview), he was “going out for breakfast, taking a drive and thinking about things.” In other words, he was driving around. That makes it far less likely that the men staked him out (or he would have noticed them tailing him immediately). They must have run across him, randomly, in the dark, and noticed it was him. I've driven by people in the dark, and it's not easy to recognize someone, especially from behind. Maybe they knew and had memorized his licence number. You think?

The third question is, "Where did it happen?" The report from the "Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said the location was 'unknown' and listed it as south of 31st Street on either East 1400 Road or East 1500 Road." In other words, Mirecki couldn't answer one of the basic questions the police ask. How many people drive to breakfast and don't know where they are?

The fourth question is, "When and how did Mirecki report the crime?" According to the LJ World, "there was conflicting information about whether Mirecki reported it at the scene or at the hospital. In an interview Monday with the Journal-World, he said he called police from the side of the road, but sheriff’s officials said they were dispatched to the hospital." Mirecki's answer doesn't add up.

The fifth question is on the beating itself. Why wasn't it more severe? Two guys, making no apparent effort to hide their identity or truck, go to all the trouble to beat Mirecki in a manner he described as, “I’m mostly shaken up, and I got some bruises and sore spots,” but then as "I got the hell beat out of me." He apparently had "a bruise visible under his right eye" and "KU religious studies professor Tim Miller said he saw Mirecki on Monday and that he looked 'scraped up.'" The beating wasn't all that severe (no offense to Mirecki; it must have sucked, but I've been beaten worse playing football). So why would they go to all that trouble - not to mention riskof jail - just to give him a bruise?

The sixth question is on descriptions. "On Monday afternoon, the office asked for the public’s help finding the suspects. Mirecki described them as two white males between the ages of 30 and 40, one wearing a red visor and wool gloves and both wearing jeans." Why no better description than one that fits a quarter of a million Kansans? I mean, have you seen two guys in a truck wearing jeans and gloves driving around rural Kansas? And who wears a visor in the dark? We have no make or model or even color for the truck, We have no licence number (maybe the police have it, but if they did, why not just go get the guys?). We have no identification at all. Now maybe it was too dark to get that (they would have been standing with the truck's lights behind them) but did Mirecki not get the licence as they drove off? If these guys were up close and personal, where are the composite drawings?

The last question is on Mirecki's actions. If you notice a truck tailing you, why get out of your car on a dark rural road? Why not drive somewhere safe, especially if you believe you are the potential victim of those who, in Mirecki's words, "are not going to stop until they see blood." Now, maybe he developed that attitude in response to the beating, but I doubt it. Why stop in the middle of nowhere and get out, unarmed, by yourself? It makes no sense.

Like I said, there may be answers to those questions and if there are, then I will jump on the bandwagon and believe his report. However, those who think I "don't doubt him on the basis of facts, " well facts are exactly what I want. Give them to me and I'll believe him.

Now, the immediate followup question asked is "Why would he fake such a thing?" I've a better one, "Has such a thing been faked before?" I'm not going to posit why he might have done it, but doing it is not remotely unheard of:

POMONA – A Claremont McKenna College psychology professor has been charged with falsely claiming someone spray-painted her vehicle with racist and anti-Semitic slurs while she was on campus on March 9, the District Attorney’s Office announced today.

There have also been reports of false hate crimes on campuses like ASU and Ole Miss among other places. Why would someone do it? That's a question I don't have an answer for. WOULD someone do it? Yes, someone would, because people have.

Copyright 2005 El Borak, inc. Makers of Clint Squint brand ponchos and cigarillos. Mangy redbone hound sold separately.

There's "Rights" and There's "Rights"

Redneck Liberal gives Snoop the what for:

Too chicken to stay and fight? Don't think so. Gloves are off and here I am. Wanna know what I stand for?

How 'bout:

a) UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE--it's a right, not a privilege.

b) FOREIGN POLICY THAT KEEPS US SAFE--no constantly changing bullshit stories about how the "proof could come in the form of a mushroom cloud", just the facts. this administration's had it's head so far up corporate oil's ass, we've never gotten a straight story. they continue to flip-flop on why we're there and how it's going. I don't believe in cut n' run. we have to fix the mess that the neo-cons have gotten us into. but we don't run. that opens terrorism to a new front.

c) ABORTION--I'm a pro-life Catholic. I believe that the right to life supercedes all rights to convenience. So you can quit the rhetoric there. I'm no stereotype, Jack.

d) BALANCED BUDGET--haven't seen one since Clinton. And it's clear that after 5 years, we can't trust the GOP prez and congress to do it. They're addicted to wreckless spending.

This is some of who I am. I'm proud to be a liberal. And I'm proud to show you my backbone.

Your move.
--Jennings

I feared just briefly that I might be a liberal because I agree on the last three, though I doubt that C and D are historically liberal positions and B was certainly missing in the last administration. Anyone who thought we needed to be in Somalia and Bosnia has no business complaining about Iraq, IMO. They are simply 2 sides of the same Wilsonian coin.

But it's A, I think, that separates liberals from everyone else and helps me sleep at night realizing I'm not one of them after all. Universal Health Care (all in caps or not) is declared to be a right to go along with a host of other "rights" to boil down to nothing more than, "I want that, so I am entitled to it."

Whence do true rights arise? Acording to the Declaration of Independence, they come from God, and it is the sole purpose of government to protect those rights:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men...

The purpose of government is no more than to "secure" the rights of men. Do those rights include Universal Health Care? In order to answer, we need to make two notes. The first is other rights that appear in the Constitution, and the second that those enumerated rights do not exhaust the list of rights.

According to the document, there are more rights:

For artisans an inventors, "the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." For everyone, the right to peacably assemble (Amendment 1), the right to keep and bear arms (Amendment 2), the right to be secure in person, property, and effects (Amendment 4)...there are others, of course, and Amendment 9 says they are not limited to those in the Constitution.

But to answer if Universal Health Care is a right rather than simply another socialist boondoggle, it's important to note what all enumerated rights have in common: they all exist and are wholly controlled by the person who holds them without recourse to others. You have a life and you own it. You don't rent it from the government or rely on the government giving it to you. Your liberty is yours and you don't get it from the government; the government simply protects it. How about your property, including intellectual property? It's yours through the right of creation (which is why property taxes are evil, btw). How about the right to assemble, bear arms, be secure? These are things you have and the government must only refrain from denying them; they need not do anything for you to excercise them.

Now, is universal health care of the same category? Well, what is UHC? It is program that allows an individual to receive a service (health care) from another person. And if it's a right, it ought to be received for free (after all, you don't rent your right to be secure from government intrusion by paying a quarterly fee - although in reality making fat campaign contributions doesn't hurt).

So do you have the right to receive a service from another person without cost? Of course not. If I can make you work for me, even if it's really, really important, then you are my slave. You have no say and your right to liberty and your property (expertise) is denied.

You have the right to bargain as a free person in the marketplace and purchase expertise; you have the right to medicate yourself and care for your own health any way you like (such a right is denied by government, but that does not make it less a right. Rather it makes the government tyrannical).

But you do not have the right to what belongs to others. Universal health care is simply theft, and it no less theft if the government takes the work directly by enslaving doctors or if it takes the wherewithal from other workers. In each case, it takes away the property from one person to give the benefits to another. It's not a right; it's the very robbery the government was established to suppress.

So when some liberal says they have a right to health care paid for by others, they are really saying they have a right to the work, money, and expertise of other people. That's not a right; it is a glimpse into the dark totalitarian hearts of those who do not respect in the slightest the rights of others.

Copyright 2005 El Borak, inc. Makers of Journey to the Center of the Mime brand silencing caps for deep thought. Tinfoil-lined to keep the bad voices out*
*Tinfoil must be applied shiny side out to avoid echoes...echoes...echoes

Thinks like a girl
or "Barbie says, 'Math is hard.'"

Again using MRIs, (psychologist Richard Haier of the University of California at Irvine) found that men have more than six times the amount of gray matter -- which controls information processing -- in their brains as women do. But females have 10 times the amount of white matter, which controls networking abilities.

The findings "may help explain why men excel in tasks requiring more local processing (like mathematics) while women tend to excel at integrating and assimilating information ... such as required for language," the study found.

One of the most amusing things about modernity is the fact that it takes millions of dollars in government grants to figure out what everyone - other than those hard-boiled feministas who determine truth by what they would like to be so - already knows.

Larry Summers got himself crucified for saying men may have more "intrinsic aptitude" for high-level science. Vox became a favourite of the politically-correct writers commune for saying that women don't write hard sci-fi. Not only are both statements true, but everyone knows that men would rather play Tetris than talk about problems and women would rather talk about problems than play Tetris. It's how the brain works, and it's so obvious that half a century ago Heinlein was using differences in humor to illustrate that Mike the living computer from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" was actually a Michelle.

But none dare say it out loud. All differences in results are politically declared to be the consequence of discrimination and stereotypes (rather than stereotypes being based on differences), and if anyone says differently, a horde of Strong Intelligent Women(tm) will immediately be on hand to tell the speaker how sick they feel or to wish bodily harm on the speaker.

I really wonder if it's representative of a unique sickness of modernity or if people have always gone to such great lengths to disavow the controlled experiment that is repeated every time couples get together and the men and women segregate themselves into one group talking about CSI and the other playing Madden. If you know which group is which, don't bother telling me. Tell Gloria Steinem.

Copyright 2005 El Borak, inc. Makers of snips, snails, and puppydogs' tails. For expectant fathers everywhere.

Real Science vs TV Science

When I was a kid, my Dad used to have a category of TV shows he called "The Fakey Five," a category which included the A-Team, MacGuyver, and a few others (before you mock by mathematical imprecision, note that there were not necessarily exactly five at any given time). These were the shows where anyone could create a cabbage gun out of an old box spring and defeat a division of AK-carrying bad guys between commercial breaks. TV science, of course, is not real science, but it's funny how such mythology memes its way into the common consciousness.

Such is the case with shooting a lock. How many times have you seen a bad guy shoot a lock with a Ruger, causing it to fly to pieces? I've seen it a million times and never really gave it much thought.

But is it as easy as it looks? Box O' Truth says, "Not so Fast"

I love the idea of putting firearms to use in advancing human knowledge.

Copyright 2005 El Borak, inc. Makers of Lyin' Your Bass Off brand photogenic rubber game fish. When you need a picture of 'the one that got away', try Lyin' Your Bass Off!

Charlie Gets Political

I don't know enough about Trotsky to be able to comment intelligently about him or his followers, and I'm certainly not a fan of hidden-and-long-lasting conspiracies that span generations. Usually behaviour is better explained by naked self-interest than complicated schemes.

That being said, Scottish Sci-fi writer Charlie Stross - in attributing modern neo-conservatism to a Trotskyite conspiracy - catches a theme that seems to me to be a) self-evident and b) mostly ignored in today's political climate: the real political axis does not lie between what Americans define as left and right, but between whether the individual or the state is paramount.

The key insight I'd like to bring to your attention at this point is that the purported political axis of the latter half of the twentieth century -- between capitalism and socialism or communism -- is a canard; in historical terms it's an aberration, for the historical pattern is a struggle between the proponents of authoritarianism and those of what is today called libertarianism (and used to be Liberalism). The aberrant conditions of the cold war made for strange bed-fellows, so that the socialist and capitalist factions were themselves coalitions of libertarian and authoritarian types: and today the old power axes are breaking down and the deeper historical factions are surfacing.

This is precisely why American political observers are both partisan and generally incorrect in their predictions. Republicans are not the opposite of Democrats: what the Democrats implement (e.g. Americorps or the Department of Education) the Republicans oppose and then expand. The Republicans oppose Democrats for the same reason Lenin opposed Trotsky: competition in their quest for power. Of course there are disagreements, but they are miniscule considering the wide range of agreement both parties share. In the 19th century the major parties disagreed on issues like the nature of money, whether America ought to have a central bank, whether America ought to be enmeshed in other people's wars; today those issues are settled, and parties simply bicker about who is going to spend all the fiat money the central bank creates and who is going to be in charge of getting us into foreign wars. The Democrats who put troops in Serbia don't oppose war in Iraq, they oppose GWB waging war in Iraq.

Such was a major insight of Davidson and Ress-Mogg in "The Sovereign Individual" when theyexplained that liberal democracy and communism were two left arms of the body politic and that the winner, liberal democracy, was only the winner because it was able to raise more money from its citizenry by allowing them to create wealth and then taxing it away than communism was able to by immediately seizing all wealth. They did not differ on the major issue: whether the government ought to seize a majority of the citizens' wealth in order to build empires.

But "the latter half of the 20th Century" is over and communism as a viable political model is gone. What is arising in its place is not a new model but a return to the old one, because economies of scale in organization size are dropping, making the projection of power to the periphery a losing proposition. Soon it won't matter who can "get there the firstest with the mostest" - America certainly can just about anywhere - because as we see in Iraq, that is no longer the measurement of who will be politically victorious. What will remain is, once again, whether America will be the land of the free or the land of the regulated.

Both major parties are dedicated to the latter. But that will change, as it always does.

(hat tip: Vox)

Copyright 2005 El Borak, inc. Publishers of ‘Swiss Family Robeson’ the heartwarming saga of a troupe of Hollywood communists marooned on a South Pacific island, who must survive by their own brains and work (it’s a short story)