harmonicminer

Below is the first post here from my wife, Mrs. Miner.  It’s about her young student, Jennifer, who recently ran (or just possibly skipped) through the gates of Heaven.

When I walked into Jennifer’s hospital room, I was initially surprised at the number of people present.  The pediatric intensive care unit doesn’t usually allow more than a few visitors at a time. The hospital staff was letting us say goodbye.

Peggy and I hugged.  There are no words for a mother at a time like this.  Then we both turned to Jennifer.  She was unconscious, breathing like my father had breathed during his last twenty four hours.  I noted the display of her vitals, grim confirmation of the obvious.  Family members were present that I had not yet met.  Introductions were made, and I sat down with silent prayers of support for a family in indescribable pain.

Conversations would start and stop.  Grandma softly sang hymns while stroking Jenny’s face.  Big sister Sarah leaned from her chair and partly lay across Jennifer.  (Maybe, if she could just hold tightly enough…)  Jennifer would occasionally open her eyes, look around briefly, then go back to sleep.  I was told that she had roused earlier in the day, alert enough to demand the remote control for the TV.  Hey, Tom and Jerry rocks.

Jennifer was born with a rare genetic disorder which resulted in a host of problems, including legal blindness, skeletal anomalies, learning difficulties and pulmonary hypertension, a fatal disorder of the heart and lungs.   She attended public school for a time, but became too frail to continue.  Our school district contacted me and asked if I would be interested in teaching Jennifer in her home.  After meeting with Jennifer and her mother, I gladly accepted the position.

Jennifer’s house was modest.  She had three sisters still living at home, and they all shared one bedroom.  There was no father.  Peggy, fiercely devoted to her children, seemed undaunted by her many challenges, drawing strength from extended family, church, and her Lord.  Jennifer was surrounded in love by a family that had truly learned to treasure what’s important in this life.

I quickly grew accustomed to her oxygen tank and was even able to avoid stepping on the tubing that accompanied Jennifer everywhere she went.  After a little more time, I nearly stopped seeing them altogether.  Jennifer was just … Jennifer.  Fourteen years old when I met her, she only weighed about sixty pounds, but she had a big attitude.  She was assertive, even stubborn, and her family and I would have it no other way.

Sweet Pea, one of two tiny canine family members, merely tolerated my presence, but she and Jennifer adored one another.  When Jennifer was feeling worse than usual, Sweet Pea would hop into her lap, seeming to comfort both of them.  In turn, Jennifer took excellent care of her dogs, leaping to their defense when I threatened one or both of the creatures with barbecue sauce.

Jennifer and I worked out of a small room Peggy had set up for that purpose.  This room was Jennifer’s domain, and she took great pride in her school work and in keeping her materials organized.  It never ceased to amaze and sometimes shame me that Jennifer accepted her many limitations without complaint. She was determined to find the good in all situations and never missed an opportunity to laugh.  Once, we read through The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  When I asked what the troll had in mind for the goats, Jennifer gleefully replied, “He wants to eat them!”  She licked her lips. Then she giggled.  Oh, that giggle…  It filled the room and made you laugh right along.

Jennifer was generous.  Sometimes I arrived at her home to find a brownie or some other example of her growing culinary skills waiting for me.  When my son had surgery, she sent him a homemade get-well card.  This required Jennifer to hold her face about three inches from the paper while she worked on the greeting.  She certainly wasn’t going to let a small annoyance like legal blindness stop her from encouraging another.

Jennifer’s life was worth living, and she lived it well.  I’ve heard some say she is “resting in peace,” but I see her running for the first time.  Running, running, running… into her Father’s arms.

Jennifer Monique Tinker

January 10, 1994-September 17, 2009

It seems now that it has become common for Russia To Spend More on Purchasing Arms Abroad.

The Ministry of Defense is looking at the armory and equipment produced by foreign manufacturers. After the war in August 2008, there were many discussions about purchasing Israeli unmanned aircraft systems. The systems were purchased without much buzz. Shooting equipment for some of the Special Forces departments is purchased abroad. Recently it was reported that a Mistral-class helicopter carriers may be purchased in France.

I’m especially interested in the notion of Russia buying arms from Israel.  Just consider what it would mean if Israel became a major supplier for Russia.   Israel is known for making cutting edge weapons systems, both in small arms and more high-tech items.  It would be very interesting if Russia became dependent on Israel for some items it found essential for its own military.  That would be bound to affect the Russian participation in Middle East matters….  and Russia’s recent slightly harder stand towards Iranian nukes may be evidence of that.

It bears watching.

Some on the Christian Left would like to pretend that they are pro-life while essentially supporting politicians and policies that are pro-abortion. (More on that general topic here.)   In this interesting article, Michael New discusses this, and sums up this way:

It seems that any concerns about abortion raised by Catholic Left groups like Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United are nothing more than rhetorical arm-waving. Technically both groups are nominally pro-life, but neither group has once criticized the Obama administration for pursuing policies which undermine the sanctity of human life, such as rescinding the Mexico City policy, repealing the Dornan Amendment, and ending the federal ban on funding on embryonic-stem-cell research.

However, health-care reform is more visible than some of these other initiatives. Furthermore, there is a good chance that if health-care reform is passed, the Department of Health and Human Services will be issuing reimbursements for abortions. To fend off future criticism, the Catholic Left probably saw a need to issue some statements to purchase itself some political cover.

Yep.

Here’s a nice read from the Christian Science Monitor on The unseen bias in Middle East reporting.

Of course, many of us have been able to see that bias for quite a long time, and not only in reporting about the Middle East. But it’s nice when other people notice it, too.

Following up on this discussion about our prospects in Afghanistan, here is An Interview with an Afghan Tribal Chief. This video and/or text interview is the first in a series on the blog of Steven Pressfield, and I highly recommend it, as well as his books, which have to be one of the most entertaining and engaging ways of learning history I’ve seen.

A secret Iranian nuclear facility has been announced, incredibly, by the UN (incredibly):

In what might be described as a bombshell, the International Atomic Energy Agency has announced that Iran had informed the agency earlier this week that it has a covert underground uranium enrichment plant in addition to the one known at Natanz.

The admission to the IAEA in Vienna comes on the heels of reports that the US, Britain and France were about to reveal the plant’s existence at the meeting of the G-20 this week in Pittsburgh.

The revelation will make it harder than ever for Iran to claim its uranium enrichment programme is for peaceful purposes. Natanz itself was a secret until rumbled in 2003, and put under inspection by the IAEA. It is hard to imagine why Iran would need to keep yet another enrichment plant, near the holy city of Qom, a secret if it was merely to make yet more fuel for its still-uncompleted nuclear power plants.

More at the link above. In the meantime, Obama continues to talk about nuclear disarmament. Maybe something else is going on behind the scenes.

We can hope.

Case Closed

The Democrats are perfectly well aware that millions of Americans will lose the coverage they have under their proposal, whatever form it finally takes. In fact, that’s their objective: in the long run–President Obama has said it may take 10 to 20 years–they intend to force all of us to lose our private health care and be forced into a socialized medicine system.

At the link, a report on a simple amendment that tested the Democrats’ sincerity on letting people keep the coverage they now have, if they like it. You know how it turned out without looking, of course, but it is interesting.

Here’s a very interesting article discussing a find of Coins with Joseph’s name found in Egypt

Archeologists have discovered ancient Egyptian coins bearing the name and image of the biblical Joseph, Cairo’s Al Ahram newspaper recently reported. Excerpts provided by MEMRI show that the coins were discovered among a multitude of unsorted artifacts stored at the Museum of Egypt.

According to the report, the significance of the find is that archeologists have found scientific evidence countering the claim held by some historians that coins were not used for trade in ancient Egypt, and that this was done through barter instead.

The period in which Joseph was regarded to have lived in Egypt matches the minting of the coins in the cache, researchers said.

“A thorough examination revealed that the coins bore the year in which they were minted and their value, or effigies of the pharaohs [who ruled] at the time of their minting. Some of the coins are from the time when Joseph lived in Egypt, and bear his name and portrait,” said the report.
…..
“Studies by Dr. Thabet’s team have revealed that what most archeologists took for a kind of charm, and others took for an ornament or adornment, is actually a coin. Several [facts led them to this conclusion]: first, [the fact that] many such coins have been found at various [archeological sites], and also [the fact that] they are round or oval in shape, and have two faces: one with an inscription, called the inscribed face, and one with an image, called the engraved face – just like the coins we use today,” the report added.

One of the comments to the article says that these weren’t “coins” but “protection amulets.”  One can only wonder where the commenter keeps his time machine.

It would make sense that Joseph’s image would have been used for such things sometimes, since he was number two for many years in the Egyptian hierarchy, second only to Pharoah himself, and essentially acted as Pharoah’s surrogate, according to the Biblical record. 

More humorous, in a dark sort of way, was this comment:

But since HAMAS insists that this country was never Jewish, the obvious conclusion is that Joseph went to Egypt from Brooklyn, perhaps from Boro Park. Now it all becomes clear; there is really no quarrel between us at all. Joseph was the first Lubavicher Rebbe.

That really would explain a lot, since I’ve known several people from Brooklyn who would sell their own brother.

The author of this article makes some very interesting comparisons and poignant observations about the Obama presidency and academic life.  It is worth reading every word.

The previous post in this series is here.

In a very interesting interview on the unlikelihood that Sci-Fi style artificial intelligence (AI) is coming soon, or even possible, computer scientist Noel Sharkey says why he thinks that AI is a dangerous dream –

I’m an empirical kind of guy, and there is just no evidence of an artificial toehold in sentience. It is often forgotten that the idea of mind or brain as computational is merely an assumption, not a truth. When I point this out to “believers” in the computational theory of mind, some of their arguments are almost religious. They say, “What else could there be? Do you think mind is supernatural?” But accepting mind as a physical entity does not tell us what kind of physical entity it is. It could be a physical system that cannot be recreated by a computer.

Of course, materialists have a very hard time accepting that anything of non-material nature exists, anything that is not some mere arrangement of matter and energy, space and time.  What the materialist approach fails to explain is that this theory is itself a non-material thing.   What is the materialist nature of an idea?   Calling it a mere brain state, even a brain state that is shared by others, forces us into the notion that a “brain state” is about something.  Yet the materialists have mostly asserted that what we call consciousness is mere “noise in the system.”  How to account for “brain states” that are about other “brain states” which are attempts to account for the existence of other “brain states”?  One is tempted to take seriously the idea that the minds of materialists are just “noise in the system.”

In his book, The Spiritual Brain, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard adduces the evidence for a non-material mind that is related to but independent of the physical brain.

If you have a short attention span, or are easily bored, don’t bother to click the link below, but if you’re interested in hearing two brilliant people discuss the “state of play” between evangelicals and Catholics, you will find this discussion between Francis Beckwith and Timothy George to be completely fascinating.

It seems that there IS an area on which nearly everyone in the world agrees….  if you believe the UN, anyway.

The “Goldstone report” by the UN on the recent Israel/Hamas conflict is out.

Predictably, it condemns Israel more or less unconditionally, while using relatively tepid, conditional language to describe Hamas’ role in the run-up to it, and during it.

Here are two takes on it.  From the Arab News Blog, and from Joel Mowbray at Townhall.com.

Just a reminder:  Israel is always a bigger target for UN “human rights” activists than any other nation, including North Korea, China, the Sudan, etc.  There is more unanimity on the “evil Israel” at the UN than there is on any other issue.

A couple of weeks ago, George Will opined that it is time to get out of Afghanistan.

Here is yet another response, from a man who knows a great deal about the history of the region, Michael Brandon McClellan, guest posting on the blog of Steven Pressfield, another expert on the region.

The correct questions to ask are these:

If we leave Afghanistan before it is reasonably stable, with a not-completely-corrupt government, what will happen next?  Who will move into the power vacuum?  What will be their motivations?  Will Afghanistan be used again as a staging and training area for terrorists acts against the West, and the US in particular?   What can we expect to be the opinion of those whom we want to believe that we keep our promises, and carry out military actions we’ve begun?  What will Joe Jihadi think about the resolve of the West, and the US in particular?

It’s expensive for the US to be in Afghanistan.  It costs some US lives.  It gets harder and harder to sell back home, where the Sept. 10, 2001 mindset is on full display, and spreading fast.  But the alternative is not peace and joy in the middle east, and a USA that is left unmolested by terrorists.  There are forces at work in this who take a LONG view, and are willing to plan attacks on the US, or US interests and allies, attacks that may not happen for a decade, but are made possible by a US withdrawal after we’ve failed to end significant Taliban and Al Qaeda influence in Afghanistan.  And, of course, Pakistan’s nuclear arms are much less of a threat to the world if they are in the hands of a Pakistan government that is not constantly challenged by the Taliban and Al Qaeda.  Pakistan’s stability is undermined by an unstable Afghanistan.

It is not good to be there.  But it’s probably far worse to leave before it’s done.  In the nature of things, this cannot be absolutely proved, and even if and when it works, there will be those who insist it wasn’t necessary.  Of course, there are those who insist to this day that the US should have stayed out of WW II.

Which proves that hindsight ISN’T always 20/20, let alone foresight.

Sometimes you just have to muddle through and do your best, and not quit because things get hard.

UPDATE:  George Will has posted another column, this one comparing the difficulty of creating a stable regime in Bosnia to doing the same for Afghanistan.   He may be right.  If he is, perhaps we should immediately withdraw our resources from Bosnia, and put it all in Afghanistan.

It’s those Pakistani nukes.  It’s those guys who intend to kill as many of us as they can, when they can.  Bosnia is no particular danger to us… yet, anyway.  I suppose that some Islamist crazies there could also be plotting revenge on the US, for saving Muslims from the Serbs, after the manner of Saudi anger at the US for saving Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War.  But we know, for a fact, what the intentions of the Taliban and Al Qaeda are.  And we can be pretty sure of the outcome if they ever succeed in destabilizing Pakistan enough to get their hands on those nukes.

It seems to me that Will is correct in pointing out the difficulties, but that his solution (pull out, hope, and bomb occasionally) is just feckless.  We already know where that leads.

Astronomers are saying they’ve found an “earthlike” planet about 500 light years from earth. It is, however, very, very hot.

So close that its surface temperature is more than 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, too toasty to sustain life. It circles its star in just 20 hours, zipping around at 466,000 mph. By comparison, Mercury, the planet nearest our sun, completes its solar orbit in 88 days.

What can it mean to call this planet “earthlike”?  I dunno…  but the astronomer who said it’s just “a bit” too close to its star is the very master of understatement.   The surface temperature is somewhere between the melting point and the boiling point of *iron*.   It’s hotter than the inside of a jet engine, so much so that any engine reaching such temperatures would probably just melt.

I do think, however, that we probably have scriptural mentions of this planet.  Dante appears to have made the same observations.

Celebration that we’ve finally found an “earthlike” planet might be a touch premature.