Stones Cry Out

…to, of course condemn Israel.  But first, some background.

ASHKELON, Israel (AP) – Residents of this beachside city are still coming to terms with being on the front lines of Israel’s battle against Hamas militants.

A dozen long-range rockets slammed into Ashkelon over the weekend, marking a significant turning point in the conflict and compelling Israel to strike back hard.

"Until yesterday, I never would have believed that I would see the things I saw," said Rachel Shimoni, 66, as she stood amid shards of glass, blown out of the front window of her clothing store. "All of a sudden, the reality has changed."

Palestinian militants fire rockets nearly daily at Sderot and other Israeli border towns near Gaza. But by reaching Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people about 11 miles north of Gaza, Hamas raised the stakes considerably. It is one of the largest cities in southern Israel, home to Mediterranean beaches, a college and strategic installations like an electric plant and a water purification plant.

Gaza militants have managed to hit the outskirts of Ashkelon in rare instances in the past, but the latest fighting was the first time they’ve been able to do it on a regular basis.

The intent is clear; Sderot is small potatoes, so with the help of Iranian rockets, the Palestinians have upped the ante and can now fire at a larger population center. 

Rockets have been raining down in souther Israel for 2 years, and when does the UN start the loud condemnations?  On the very day when Israel returns fire.

GAZA (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel for using "excessive" force in the Gaza Strip and demanded a halt to its offensive after troops killed 61 people on the bloodiest day for Palestinians since the 1980s.

Addressing an emergency session of the Security Council in New York after four days of fighting in which 96 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians,

And, oh yeah, …

Ban also called on Gaza’s Islamist militants to stop firing rockets.

But that call didn’t come until Israel defended itself.  Odd, that.  But now, what should this august body do?

Diplomats said the Security Council was unlikely to adopt a Libyan resolution that condemns Israel’s killing of civilians but makes no mention of the Palestinian rocket fire.

Can you say "blind spot"?

The United States, Israel’s closest ally and a veto-wielding member of the Council, made clear its understanding of the Israeli position, while regretting loss of life on both sides.

"There is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self-defense," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

European diplomats said they believed the world body should at least make some comment on bloodshed which some say jeopardizes the new U.S.-backed peace talks between Israel and Abbas, who holds sway now only in the occupied West Bank.

The UN once again demonstrates the term "self-parody" as they consider the possibility that they should make some comments on the bloodshed, again, after 2 years of rocket fire from Gaza.  Good morning, fellas, hope the noise of the bombs didn’t disturb your slumber.

And speaking of self-parody…

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "If Israeli aggression continues, it will bury the peace process."

Yes, well, it depends on your definition of "peace".  For the Arab world, and apparently for the UN as well, "peace" simply means bombing Israel with impunity.  It is this sort of inaction and selective action that has convinced me that the UN is utterly broken. 

[tags]Israel,Gaza,Middle East,Sderot,Ashkelon,Palestinians,United Nations,Hamas,Iran,Ban Ki-moon,Gordon Johndroe,Mahmoud Abbas,Saeb Erekat[/tags]

It’s the day of the Clinton Firewall ™.  Will she or won’t she (win TX & OH, stay in the race)?

Can Huckabee pull an upset in the Lone Star State?  (Well, no, but feel free to comment anyway.)

Thus begins the open thread.

Next week, Lent begins in the Eastern tradition and continues in the West. Traditionally, in the East, Lent begins with the Canon of St. Andrew, which takes 4 nights to complete. This service, in my opinion, is arguably the most, well, devastating expression of liturgical repentance that is performed. The canon is then followed by a Compline (Vespers/Evening Prayer) service which ends, in the Slavic tradition with the Prayer of St. Ephraim. As noted here:

 A basic distinguishing feature of the Great Canon is its extremely broad use of images and subjects taken both from the Old and New Testaments. As the Canon progresses, the congregation encounters many biblical examples of sin and repentance. The Bible (and therefore, the Canon) speaks of some individuals in a positive light, and about others in a negative one—the penitents are expected to emulate the positive examples of sanctity and repentance, and to learn from and avoid the negative examples of sin, fallen nature and pride. However, one of the most notable aspects of the Canon is that it attempts to portray the Biblical images in a very personal way to every penitent: the Canon is written in such form that the faithful identify themselves with many people and events found in the Bible.

So, if you are Catholic or Protestant practice Lent or not I’d like to recommend that you try to find and visit a local Orthodox parish and experience the Great Canon. I’m not saying this as an attempt to wrest anyone from their particular practice or tradition. Instead what I’m seeking is raise awareness of this powerful meaningful religious Lenten experience. If possible, find a Slavic (OCA, Romanian, Ukrainian or similar) parish to go to in order to see this as the above mentioned prayer caps the service very well and is absent in the Greek tradition. I don’t know about the Antiochian Orthodox tradition on whether they use St. Ephrem’s prayer or not.

Some notes for the non-Orthodox visitor:

1.  Prostration will be practice by the Orthodox during this service. Nobody will be insulted if you don’t participate. Prostration physically involves kneeling and pressing your forehead to the floor between your hands. Those who perform this will say, this is how man should present himself before God. But for the visitor, remember prostration or not … is voluntary and don’t be surprised to see it.
2. The Orthodox present will kiss icons. Veneration (kissing) of icons is at a basic level a way of offering respect, which is much more dignified than, say, an American high-five or thumbs up. This isn’t idol worship and again, it’s voluntary and nobody will be taken aback if you don’t also do that. Lighting of candles and kissing the priest’s hand are similar practices which again you don’t have to do, and nobody will censure you at all for not doing so.
3. The music will be a capella voice and likely depending on the skill and number of choral members who are present possible a little shaky. The entire canon will be sung or chanted. Forgive mistakes, imagine how it would sound done as written, and more importantly try to let the chant help you find other ways of appreciating what is being said.
4. There will be incense. In the Old Testament, worship always entailed incense. That remains the case in the Orthodox tradition.

Again, I’ll repeat, if you are of any Western tradition and are in Lent or want to connect in a personal way via liturgy with repentance … go to the Canon of St. Andrew next week … at the very least try it just on the first night and keep coming if it connects with you.

And if you do, and have either never witnessed the Canon before or an Orthodox service, email me or leave a comment here on how you found the experience. I’ll collect and repost any of those responses.

The prayer of St. Ephrem:

O Lord and Master of my life, give me not the spirit of sloth, idle curiosity/meddling, lust for power and idle talk.

But grant unto me, Thy servant, a spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love.

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see mine own faults and not to judge my brothers and sisters. For blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages. Amen.

• Humor found (mostly) on church signage.
• Cricket races in New Jersey, against expectations.
• Reading those with whom you disagree. It’s why I recently picked up a bunch of Zizek’s books. Zizek is an unrepentant Leninist/Lacanian radical materialist which is about as far from my viewpoint as you can get. Yet he is provocative and intelligent, and ultimately thought provoking. Who do you read that holds a position wildly different from yours?
• On Kosovo.
• Two remarks of Mr Obama’s. A study in contrast.
• Wales and a suicide epidemic among the young.
• Zoom, if you have money to burn. Another car related note here.

That’s all they can stands, they can’t stands no more.  (Apologies to Popeye.)

ASHKELON, Israel – Israel’s deputy defense minister warned on Friday of a disaster in the Gaza Strip after Israel activated an air raid system to protect a major city from increasingly threatening Palestinian rocket barrages.

As Israeli troops, tanks and aircraft went after Palestinian rocket operations, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio that Israel had "no other choice" but to launch a massive military operation in Gaza.

For over 2 years, ever since the good-faith move out of Gaza by the Israelis, the Palestinians have been flinging rockets from Gaza into southern Israel almost daily, mostly at Sderot.  But now, thanks to the ever-insistently-"peaceful" Iranians, the attacks are getting worse.

Israel evacuated its troops and settlers from Gaza in late 2005, but the rocket fire has persisted and this week became more ominous as Iranian-made rockets slammed into a major city.

Communities right over the Gaza border have taken the overwhelming brunt of the rocket attacks from Gaza, but militants firing longer-range Iranian rockets struck hit the town of Ashkelon several times on Thursday. One sliced through the roof of an apartment building and three floors below, and another landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl.

The world gasps in shock whenever Israel retaliates in defense of their own people, aiming at military targets, but yawns in apathy when the Palestinians indiscriminately chuck explosives at civilians.  And at the UN, it’s all Israel’s fault.

Maybe, but only because they didn’t retaliate earlier.  Letting the bully continue to act out, without consequence, doesn’t stop the bullying.

[tags]Israel,Middle East,Gaza,Palestinians,Hamas[/tags]

Intelligent Design is often ridiculed as not being science in that it is, allegedly, not falsifiable, has not produced any real predictions, and is creationism in disguise. However, what is the alternative to the notion of Intelligent Design, if not Unintelligent Design? Natural Process Evolution (aka Neo-Darwinism, Naturalism, etc.) rests on the Blind Watchmaker argument in which mindless processes, via the natural realm, are responsible for the diversity of life on planet earth.

We are told that we, as humans, have evolved to the point where we have minds that think, that reason, that design, and that engineer. Yet, if this is the case, how is it that we now seem to take our cues, as shown below, from the alleged products of a completely mindless process? Doesn’t common sense, from our evolved minds, tell us that if we see a well designed and engineered product, then it is reasonable to conclude that that product came from a mind?

Therefore, I’d like to present a series of examples that we find in nature, of MD (i.e., Mindless-process Design), and how we acknowledge the inescapable conclusion that there is design / engineering in what we behold:

Birds, Bats And Insects Hold Secrets For Aerospace Engineers

Natural flyers like birds, bats and insects outperform man-made aircraft in aerobatics and efficiency. Engineers are studying these animals as a step toward designing flapping-wing planes with wingspans smaller than a deck of playing cards.

A Biochemical Watch Found in a Cellular Heath

The discovery of biomolecular motors and machines inside the cell gives new life to the Watchmaker Argument. In many instances, this molecular-level biomachinery stands as a strict analog to man-made machinery and represents a potent response to the legitimate criticism leveled by Hume and others. The biomachines found in the cell’s interior reveal a diversity of form and function that mirrors the diversity of designs produced by human engineers. The one-to-one relationship between the parts of man-made machines and the molecular components of biomachines is startling. Paley’s case for the Creator only becomes stronger with every new example of a biomotor that biochemists discover.

As remarkable as these biomachines are, perhaps none are as provocative as the biochemical timekeeping devices discovered in cyanobacteria.

Scientists Discover Remarkable Editing System For Protein Production

Even small mistakes made by cells during protein production can have profound disease effects, but the processes cells use to correct mistakes have been challenging to decipher. Recent work by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute, however, has uncovered two surprising new methods for such editing.

[tags]blind watchmaker, creation, creationism, darwin, darwinism, evolution, hugh ross, id, intelligent design, ken miller, michael behe, naturalism, old earth creationism, phillip johnson, reasons to believe, richard dawkins, stephen jay gould[/tags]

• A Bible quiz from the top of the hill (not over it!).

• Two for WFB, his desk (I have sympathy as I struggle with the messy desk “thing”) and some quotes.
• The essential dishonesty of Obama’s claims of bi-partisanship explained in the context of the judiciary. Wolf in sheep’s clothing.
• Fasting and Lent … fast approaching, a good discussion.
• Heh.
• Ohio and jobs.

I downloaded Mr Obama’s little Plan the other day. He says he’s in full support of strengthening laws which support and strengthen unions. Is he insane? Alternatively … stupid, pandering,  or evil?

He’s suggesting this in a global market were the local Ford unions just recently went onstrike for more, …  well, whatever. They (and Obama) are apparently not noticing that they’re now in direct competion globally with companies like Tata, who probably pay their employees $2.50 per day (and that’s likely a 10-12 hour 6 day-per-week workweek). Tata is now launching a 2,500 dollar automobile. Now it probably doesn’t have the bells and whistles that even a low end Ford does. But … I’ll bet it is a lot nicer than whatever Ford thinks it can make a profit at selling for $2500. It takes a lot of mechanization, get up and go, yankee ingenuity to make up over an order or so of magnitude difference in manpower. Furthermore remember that unions do the opposite of inspiring any of those three. Jobs are leaving Ohio, not because unions are too strong but because American salary demands aren’t competitive on the global market.

A new Zogby survey released today shows that two-thirds of respondents are dissatisfied with traditional media outlets:

Two thirds of Americans – 67% – believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, a new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

The survey also found that while most Americans (70%) think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, two thirds (64%) are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities.

Meanwhile, the online survey documented the shift away from traditional sources of news, such as newspapers and TV, to the Internet – most dramatically among so-called digital natives – people under 30 years old.

It’s also no surprise that Republicans and Independents are more likely to be dissatisfied with traditional media:

Republicans (79%) and political independents (75%) are most likely to feel disenchanted with conventional journalism, but the online survey found 50% of Democrats also expressed similar concerns. Those who identify themselves as “very conservative” were among the most dissatisfied, with 89% who view traditional journalism as out of touch.

Traditional media outlets have never adjusted to the proliferation of news outlets and the competitive forces that are now at work. Unless they can make substantial changes, they are unlikely to survive much longer.

• Che and the other side at The Belmont Club.
• Unimpressed by the honesty of the Islamic clerical letter.
• Another, Kim Zigfeld, is unimpressed by the honesty of the New York Times.
• Don’t try that here! Please.
• If temperatures had gone up this year by .6-.7C you know we’d not be hearing the end of it. But they went down, very dramatically … globally. Curious about the deafening silence on that from the global warming crowd. One wonders how they rationalize that little discrepancy. It is suspected (no link) by some that a unexpected low in sunspot activity and solar output is the cause. We’ll see if the solar output theories of global climate come back (and the dissipation of Saturn rings and Mars warming re-appears in discussions of climate).

That’s the title of a post by Russ Neglia on his Townhall blog "Pro-Life, Pro-Logic".  How does the determination a person relate to the beginning of the universe?  Click through and see his well-reasoned arguments (hence the blog’s name). 

While you’re there, read his excellent post on the language of abortion.  He really deconstructs some of the (sometimes contradictory) words and phrases used to justify the abortion position.

[tags]abortion,language,pro-life[/tags]

Jason Kuznicki writes on marriage here. He notes:

The thesis: Marriage is in many ways a defense against the state. Marriage is many different things, but in a whole set of ways, it is an approach toward a more limited and more tractable form of government. Marriage — “state-sanctioned” marriage — is a defense of the home against the bureaucracy.

Marriage does a lot of things. Here are just a few of them: It helps to decide child custody and presumed parental obligations. It resolves nearly all questions about inheritance. It does the same with property and financial decision making. It settles who gets to make medical decisions. It determines who may have standing to sue for wrongful death. Whether rightly or wrongly, it helps to determine — and who may not — receive retirement benefits, even if those benefits come from a private company.

In each of these cases, I think it’s preferable to have a “default” state: It’s just better to have an understanding about how, barring alternate arrangements, everything is going to play out: When one spouse dies, the other gets the house, the kids, the right to sue. No fuss, no questions asked. Not even any probate in a lot of jurisdictions, as I understand it. When one spouse is incapacitated, you look to the other one for the life-and-death medical decisions. And so forth. In a time of crisis, you do not want a bunch of lawyers trying to argue their way through your private life. You just want to get on with the business at hand.

He continues to point out that this default state leaves those who don’t follow the default in some difficulty, a point on which there can be no reasonable disagreement (that is one on which no reasonable people, I think, can disagree). There are two other facets to this discussion which are salient, after which I’ll attempt to wrap up to a conclusion. And, much of this was reasoned and conceived during the fever dreams of the last two days for which I apologize in advance. Read the rest of this entry

Well, I was taken by the flu for a bit, which is the reason for the absence of yesterday’s “things heard” posting.

• Growing up and being adult, a thing more and more not done.
• The price of the false positive, and a question on the frequency of error.
• On Obama and the Captain.
• Just a little partisan.
• Ecumenism via music.

It’s snowing.  No, I mean really snowing.

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

…

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

Granted, as the article goes on to day, "one winter does not a climate make".  But you just know that if the numbers were in the other direction this would be trumpeted by Al Gore and his shills in the media.  You just know it because, well, they have.

This has got some climatologists rethinking things.

According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona — two prominent climate modellers — the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.

"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It’s not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind’s effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.

But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.

And then there’s always that major source of global warming, the Sun.

Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

Again, as the article says, while it’s way too early to start predicting a new Ice Age, it’s also way too early to be predicting catastrophic warming as well.  Thus it’s also way too early to make huge economic and policy changes based on what could very well be a flawed premise.

[tags]global warming,environment,climate change,National Climatic Data Center,Toronto,Kyoto protocol,Arctic Sea,Gilles Langis,Canadian Ice Service,Robert Toggweiler,Joellen Russell,Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory,Princeton University,University of Arizona,Kenneth Tapping,National Research Council,Little Ice Age[/tags]

Now that Ralph Nader has entered the presidential race, things get a little more interesting.  My personal feeling is that McCain would lose to Obama but could win against Clinton, with all her negatives.  Nader typically draws votes more from the Democratic candidate (just ask Al Gore), so with Obama looking more and more like the presumptive candidate, I like this development. 

One of the things that Nader’s candidacy always puts forth is that he is the candidat of real change, and that there’s not much difference between the two major parties.  Which, in my mind, means that those who vote for Nader on that basis really just don’t generally pay attention to what’s going on.  That most of Nader’s votes come from Democrats says, to me, more about Democrats than about Nader.

[tags]Ralph Nader,Al Gore,Democrats,politics[/tags]