Feb 20 2009

Wah

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 2:04 pm

I know just how they feel. I attend faculty meetings.

Misery loves company.


Feb 20 2009

Keeping America Safe

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 10:59 am

It’s time to get serious about fighting terrorism, and also ending violence in our schools.


Feb 20 2009

Can it happen again?

Category: Europe,Islam,Israelharmonicminer @ 10:51 am

Vichy government found responsible for deporting Jews in WWII

France’s top judicial body on Monday recognized the French government’s responsibility for the deportation of Jews during World War II, the clearest such recognition to date of the state’s role in the Holocaust.

The Council of State found that the government of Nazi-occupied France at the time held the responsibility for deportations that led to anti-Semitic persecution

The decision released on Monday also found that the deportation had been compensated for since 1945, apparently ruling out any reparations for deportees or their families.
Advertisement
Thousands of Jews were deported from France to Nazi death camps during the occupation. After the war, subsequent French governments took decades to acknowledge any role played by the collaborationist Vichy regime in the Holocaust.

Europe is busy bending over backwards to accommodate the Islamic immigrants (and second and third generations of same) that have been used to support European socialism, in the absence of a sufficient birthrate of traditional Europeans to keep the trains running and fund entitlements.

Can any objective observer believe that Europe is less likely to target Jews, or simply allow them to be targeted by Islamic anti-Semites, than it would have been if the slow Islamic invasion hadn’t occurred?  The facts belie any optimisim in the matter:  Jews are being targeted now, and the various states do little except public hand-wringing.

The virulent disdain in which the state of Israel is held by Europe is a mask for something uglier, and not so political as personal, I fear.

If I was a European Jew, I’d get outta Dodge now.  It’s 1933, and the clock is ticking.  A war is coming, not one that really involves Jews directly (being but a continuance of the siege of Vienna in 1683) , but one in which too many of them will be casualties of convenience, and contempt.

Tags: , , ,


Feb 20 2009

Holder should hold his fire

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 9:57 am

Nation of Cowards? by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal 19 February 2009

Nation of Cowards?
So says Eric Holder, but what’s really cowardly is racial dishonesty.

Read it all.


Feb 20 2009

Killing presidents for fun and profit?

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 12:28 am

A cartoon in the New York Post that compared the people who wrote the stimulus bill to a crazy, violent monkey (who was shot by police) has been interpreted by the usual suspects as referring to Obama, despite the fact that he didn’t write the stimulus bill, Pelosi, Reid and company did. All Obama really did was sign it. But the victimology crowd is claiming the Post is advocating violence towards the president with comments like this:

NY Post apologizes, to some, over monkey cartoon

Some protesters said the cartoon not only underscored racist tropes but even suggested that Obama should be shot.

“Since when can you call for the killing of the president of the United States?” demanded City Councilman Charles Barron.

Obviously, this is ridiculous on its face.  The Post made no reference to Obama, who did not write the stimulus bill, and when African-American professional victims take umbrage at jokes involving a monkey, all they do is perpetuate a risible stereotype that dates from a bygone era (thankfully) and is simply no longer on anyone’s mind…  except theirs, it would seem.

Anyway, apparently Councilman Barron doesn’t know about this.

Or this.

Or this.

I didn’t bother to dig up all the links, but there have been books, plays, films and artwork about killing President Bush, both in the US and overseas.

And you’ll pardon my suspicion that even if Mr. Barron did know about them, he wouldn’t be too troubled by it.

Can crocodile tears be so huge that someone can drown in them?


Feb 19 2009

Christian Left Rhetoric on “reducing abortion”

Category: abortionharmonicminer @ 10:25 am

Why “Reducing the Number of Abortions” not Necessarily Prolife

…pro-life activists have worked tirelessly over the years to reduce the number of abortions, but a numerical reduction is not our only goal. The prolife position is that all members of the human community, including the unborn, have inestimable and equal worth and dignity and thus are entitled to the fundamental protection of the laws. “Reducing the number of abortions” could occur in a regime of law in which this principle of justice is denied, and that is the regime that President Obama wants to preserve and extend. It is a regime in which the continued existence of the unborn is always at the absolute discretion of others who happen to possess the power to decide to kill them or let them live. Reducing the number of these discretionary acts of killing simply by trying to pacify and/or accommodate the needs of those who want to procure or encourage abortions only reinforces the idea that the unborn are subhuman creatures whose value depends exclusively on someone else’s wanting them or deciding that they are worthy of being permitted to live. So, in theory at least, there could be fewer abortions while the culture drifts further away from the prolife perspective and the law becomes increasingly unjust.

Consider this illustration. Imagine if someone told you in 19th century America that he was not interested in giving slaves full citizenship, but merely reducing the number of people brought to this country to be slaves. But suppose another person told you that he too wanted to reduce the number of slaves, but proposed to do it by granting them the full citizenship to which they are entitled as a matter of natural justice. Which of the two is really “against slavery” in a full-orbed principled sense? The first wants to reduce the number of slaves, but only while retaining a regime of law that treats an entire class of human beings as subhuman property. The second believes that the juridical infrastructure should reflect the moral truth about enslaved people, namely, that they are in fact human beings made in the image of their Maker who by being held in bondage are denied their fundamental rights.

Just as calling for the reduction of the slave population is not the same as believing that slaves are full members of the moral community and are entitled to protection by the state, calling for a reduction in the number of abortions is not the same as calling for the state to reflect in its laws and policies the true inclusiveness of the human family, that it consists of all those who share the same nature regardless of size, level of development, environment or dependency.

Yep.  Francis Beckwith says it exactly right.

The argument that “Obama’s policies will reduce the number of abortions because people will feel they have other alternatives” is very, very ugly under the surface.  Yet, exactly that was the position of many Christians who voted for Obama.  They need to reconsider, repent, and re-engage with the real pro-life movement.

I wonder if they’d have thought a good solution to slavery was to leave it legal, but give away farming machinery to plantation owners, hoping they’d release their slaves?

Tags:


Feb 18 2009

The Next Great Awakening: part 4

Category: religion,science,theologyharmonicminer @ 10:04 am

The previous post in this series is here.

Scientists have been promising for some time now that we’re likely to find intelligent, technological species all over the universe, starting in our galaxy.

Maybe, maybe not.

There’s the Fermi Paradox, which essentially boils down to the question, if the universe has so many intelligent life-forms, why don’t we hear from them, or see any evidence OF them?

If interstellar travel is possible, even the “slow” kind nearly within the reach of Earth technology, then it would only take from 5 million to 50 million years to colonize the galaxy. This is a relatively small amount of time on a geological scale, let alone a cosmological one. Since there are many stars older than the sun, or since intelligent life might have evolved earlier elsewhere, the question then becomes why the galaxy has not been colonized already.

Consider:  how long will it take for the human race to create self-replicating space probes that are able to “live off the land” so to speak, using local materials to create copies of themselves, and move on to the next star system and do it again?   How long to create interstellar space flight systems of some kind?  Think big.  100 years?  1000 years?  10,000 years?  If ANY species in the galaxy ever reached this point (it would only take ONE, in all the history of the galaxy), and if that point was reached even 50 million years ago (a mere eyeblink in a galaxy perhaps 10-12 billion years old, or more), then we should see evidence of it, assuming these space probes have multiplied as designed, and probably overlapped various star systems many times over by now.  The first time we began broadcasting, we should have been noticed, assuming that an intelligence that wanted to send such probes was interested in other intelligent beings, and had at least one probe in the Solar System already (of course, the first thing they would have seen from TV broadcasts may have convinced them we were all idiots….).

So:  unless every other gregarious, curious race died before it could create such technology, or unless we are the first in the history of the galaxy (neither of which is consistent with the notion that the human race is “ordinary”), we may very well be alone.

Then there’s the Rare Earth perspective, essentially itself an extension of the anthropic principle, or more properly, a list of evidence in favor of the anthropic principle.  Essentially, it’s all about the fine-tuning of the universe, our galaxy, our solar system, and our planet, for human life, particularly intelligent, technological human life.

Anthropic reasoning typically concludes that the stability of structures essential for life, from atomic nuclei to the whole universe, depends on delicate balances between different fundamental forces. These balances are believed to occur only in a tiny fraction of possible universes so that this universe appears fine-tuned for life. Anthropic reasoning attempts to explain and quantify this fine tuning.

Related to this is the Privileged Planet hypothesis, the notion that the Earth is uniquely placed in our galaxy, and our galaxy uniquely placed in its local cluster and that local cluster in its super-cluster to allow the universe to be carefully observed and understood, with almost any other place being too bright (too many stars too close) or too dark (too many obscuring gas clouds).

All of that provides some context for this report claiming that the Milky Way Galaxy has ‘billions of Earths’

There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, a US conference has heard.

Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science said many of these worlds could be inhabited by simple lifeforms.

He was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

So far, telescopes have been able to detect just over 300 planets outside our Solar System. (update: the original form of this article was created in 2009, and as of 2023, many thousands of extra-solar planets have been detected)

Very few of these would be capable of supporting life, however. Most are gas giants like our Jupiter, and many orbit so close to their parent stars that any microbes would have to survive roasting temperatures.

But, based on the limited numbers of planets found so far, Dr Boss has estimated that each Sun-like star has on average one “Earth-like” planet.

This simple calculation means there would be huge numbers capable of supporting life.

“Not only are they probably habitable but they probably are also going to be inhabited,” Dr Boss told BBC News. “But I think that most likely the nearby ‘Earths’ are going to be inhabited with things which are perhaps more common to what Earth was like three or four billion years ago.” That means bacterial lifeforms.

Outside of the obvious fact that this was just a wild guess by a scientist (since Earth-size rocky planets in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star appear to be rare to very, very rare), why do you suppose that a scientist incautious enough to make the claim is so cautious about the likely development of advanced life (meaning anything more than bacteria)?  The answer is pretty simple.

Scientists really don’t have a fuzzy clue how life on Earth began so fast (in an eye-blink in geological time) just after it was cooling off from the Late Heavy Bombardment.  Forget all the nonsense you’ve heard and read about “billions and billions of years in the primordial soup” allowing life to spontaneously generate.  First, there was no primordial soup.  Second, life appears to have begun within just a very few million years of the time Earth cooled enough to allow it to survive.  This is not something scientists talk about much to the public, but it’s a hot topic at conventions, workshops, etc.  For a more complete presentation on the huge problem presented to science by the origin of life, see Signature In The Cell, by Stephen C. Meyer.

The current theory judged most likely by many exo-biologists is that the Earth was seeded with life from some other planet.  No kidding, some of the most brilliant and prominent believe exactly this.

So Alan Boss is loathe to suggest many intelligent species elsewhere (he surely knows all about the Fermi Paradox), but he’s willing to take a swing at the notion that whatever seeded life on Earth may have done so elsewhere, though of course it isn’t going to be something he talks about a lot.  Sounds too much like science fiction, don’t you know?  Or some wild notion that God goes around the universe seeding life…  can’t have that, either.

Also omitted from Boss’ theory is that the Earth has been a reasonably safe place for the development of advanced life because it is between two spiral arms of our galaxy, not IN one of them, which would surely have been deadly for advanced life due to radiation, super-nova proximity, etc., not to mention being a lousy place from which to observe the galaxy or the universe….  ever try looking at the stars from downtown Las Vegas?  The vast majority of Boss’ “earthlike” planets would be in star systems hostile to advanced life, either due to the type of star they orbited, or the location of that star system in the galaxy.

Much of this is nicely presented in Why the Universe is the way it is, by Hugh Ross.  You may or may not agree with all his conclusions, but I think you’ll find it a very provocative read.  A recent book by Dr. Ross (as of 2022) is Designed To The Core, in which he explains the probable great rarity of conditions congenial to life in the universe, which relates nicely to be the Rare Earth and Privileged Planet concepts mentioned above.

So, why is all this in “The Next Great Awakening” series?

Because the more unique we understand ourselves to be in the universe, the more personal a God we might be willing to consider.  Science has been telling us for a few centuries now that we are not unique, not particularly special, that we were essentially inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, that whatever God there may be obviously viewed humans as a minor sidelight in creation (if indeed there IS a “creation”), that there are probably millions of other intelligent species in the universe, and so we don’t really matter that much….  with a corollary that maybe even the EARTH itself is more important than silly little US, the current ruling paradigm of the eco-pagans.

A representative sentiment:

The non-scientist’s relation to modern science is basically craven: we look to its discoveries and technology to save us from disease, to give us a faster ride and a softer life, and at the same time we shrink from what it has to tell us of our perilous and insignificant place in the cosmos. Not that threats to our safety and significance were absent from the pre-scientific world, or that arguments against a God-bestowed human grandeur were lacking before Darwin. But our century’s revelations of unthinkable largeness and unimaginable smallness, of abysmal stretches of geological time when we were nothing, of supernumerary galaxies and indeterminate subatomic behavior, of a kind of mad mathematical violence at the heart of matter have scorched us deeper than we know.

But much has changed since 1985 when Updike wrote the above.  Starting with the Big Bang theory decades earlier, continuing with the failure of biology to account for how life can possibly have begun (despite early optimism in the 1950s), and reinforced by the bewildering amount of fine-tuning required in the universe, our solar system, and Earth, in order for us to exist at all, let alone in a place where we can survive long enough as a civilization to develop high technology, and then for that place to be one of the few places where life might exist that also allows direct observation of the rest of the universe, we have seen science in the last 70-100 years begin to point, gradually, to the very special place humans have in Creation.  In fact, many hints of the foregoing were there in 1985, but perhaps Updike didn’t know it, because scientists weren’t talking about it in the lay media.

I believe that the incredible fine tuning of the universe is a story that needs to be told constantly by Christians, not in fear of what science may reveal, but in celebration that maybe, just maybe, science is about to “come home”, to point to basic facts of the relationship of humans to Creation that the church has taught for millennia.

Even if we someday learn of other intelligent civilizations, it is already obvious that they will be very rare.   And if they exist at all, I strongly suspect they will have their own revelation, one that is bound to have many parallels to our own, since it will have come from the same Source.   Of course, there is also the chance that they represent so thoroughly fallen a society that maybe we should have kept our mouths shut.  Go and reread the Screwtape Letters sometime.

Just to stimulate your thinking in this direction, there’s a very interesting science fiction book, Calculating God, which proceeds from the assumption that the aliens who visit us are theists.   The book takes many liberties, of course…  but it’s an intriguing idea that the aliens may show up on Earth as missionaries.

In the meantime, exactly how long will it take mainstream science to consider Creation itself as a scientific theory?  Let’s stake out some territory here…  if no alien races have been found in, say, 100 years, can we say they aren’t there?  Or 1000 years?  It’s not looking so good for SETI these days…..  unless you’re buying all the UFO reports coming out as evidence.  I’m keeping my powder dry.

The next post in this series will be here.

Tags: , ,


Feb 17 2009

There are “extremist fundamentalists” and then there are “extremist fundamentalists”

Category: Iraq,Islamharmonicminer @ 11:19 am

The next time you hear some over-educated clown pontificating about the dangers of “religious extremism” and suggesting that there is any kind of parallel at all between “Islamic fundamentalists” and “Christian fundamentalists”, you have my permission to call that person a fool or a liar…. or both. When, exactly, was the last time you heard of one Christian sect killing members of another, just for being there?  It appears that Sunni extremists are killing Shiites (and the reverse has happened in the last years as well…  or the last centuries, for that matter) who are simply on religious pilgrimage.

Iraqi police: Female suicide bomber kills 40

The attacks against the pilgrims appear to be part a Sunni extremist campaign to rekindle the sectarian conflict that nearly plunged the country into full-scale civil war two years ago.

On Thursday, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt packed with nails among Shiite worshippers in Karbala near the revered Imam Hussein shrine, killing eight pilgrims and wounding more than 50.

A day earlier, at least 12 people were killed and more than 40 wounded in bombings in Baghdad that targeted Shiite pilgrims traveling to Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) to the south.

Iraqi officials have mounted an extensive security operation to protect the pilgrims, who will be celebrating Monday’s end of 40 days of mourning that follow Ashoura, the anniversary of the seventh-century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein.

He was killed in a battle near Karbala for the leadership of the nascent Muslim nation following Muhammad’s death in 632. His death contributed to the split between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

About 40,000 Iraqi troops have been deployed along major routes to Karbala, and officials say security cameras have been installed near the Imam Hussein shrine to keep a lookout for possible threats.

Despite strict security, al-Qaida and other extremist groups have frequently targeted Shiite pilgrims during religious commemorations, which were severely curtailed under Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime.

This appears to be work of raw hatred of “the other.” No Christians do this, anywhere in the world, nor have they done for centuries.

Do fundamentalist Christians make you fell physically threatened? I didn’t think so.

Tags: ,


Feb 16 2009

The Keynes-stoned cops are in control now

Category: Congress,economy,governmentharmonicminer @ 10:45 am

Read this next paragraph carefully.   If people who believe such things are ever in control of our government and you are not frightened by the implications, then you simply didn’t understand what you read.
Keynes Returns

“The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation. The time may arrive a little later when the community as a whole must pay attention to the innate quality as well as to the mere numbers of its future members.”

The problem, as is pointed out in the article at the link above, is that people who believe this ARE in control of government, right now. Read the whole article. Then pray.

Tags: , ,


Feb 15 2009

I give up. We’re doomed. REDUX

Category: economy,government,taxesharmonicminer @ 10:40 am

The California legislature is about to drive California straight off the Santa Monica cliffs into the Pacific Ocean.  They appear to be driving blind, in the fog, with their eyes shut, on icy roads, without seat belts in a vehicle without airbags….  or doors, or brakes, for that matter.

They are essentially refusing to make any significant cuts of any kind in state spending (a couple of cosmetic reductions, but nothing that matters, or will actually make a difference…  remember they call it a “cut” when all they’ve done is increase it by less than they’d planned).  And they are making a HUGE tax increase, across the board, in a state with very high taxes already.  They’re reducing the child deduction credit, hugely, directly increasing the tax bill of families.  They’re doubling the annual car tax.  They’re adding 12 cents per gallon gas tax, to an already high gas tax, compared to other states, and it ain’t for roads, it’s to fund bizarro offices and bureaucrats who do nothing but sit around dreaming up new regulations to harass people and business.  And, of course, to reward all the special interest groups and entitlement leeches who put them in office.  They’re raising the SALES TAX by 2 cents per dollar (some accounts say “only” 1 cent, but the 2 cent report persists), and California’s sales tax is already 8% in most places.  And there will be a 2.5% “surcharge” on income tax.  Holy Moley.

I am not rich by any stretch, just pretty middle class, and a quick tally leads me to believe that between all these things, I’ll spend about $2000 more in just California taxes per year in the new regime….  and one of my cars is a 2005 Prius (with about 120K miles on it now)!

What do all these taxes have in common?  They are very regressive taxes, meaning they hit lower income people the hardest, percentage wise, and families with children get hit the worst.  Whatever happened to the Democrats being the “party of the people”?

As with the federal government, all they know how to do is spend money they don’t have.  They have apparently no sense of how economics actually works.  They have no concept of what damage they’re doing to the business environment in California.  Businesses are leaving in droves, and other states are chortling at their windfall of new businesses.

I am in mind boggle.

And just to complete the picture, they’re about to approve ridiculous environmental regulations, and “endangered species” regulations, that will make it possible for the eco-pagans to sue just about everyone for just about everything.  THAT will really help the economic recovery, won’t it?

I’m crawling into a hole and pulling the lid in after me.  Then I’m getting out the shovel and digging deeper.

The California Republican party is just about the most pitiful entity since, I dunno, the Roman Viola Ensemble featuring Nero the violinist as guest performer.  They are simply gutless.

I didn’t know when we elected him that Arnold was planning to TERMINATE California as a viable state.

I think my ten year old would do a better job of running the state.  She actually counts her money to see if she can afford things.

But Arnold (RINO that he is) and the Democrats are throwing us to the lions…  who are very hungry, even though they were just fed yesterday.

Tags: , , ,


« Previous PageNext Page »