Good morning.

1. Why was that man arrested? 
2. Unimpressed by Mr Assange.
3. The tax deal and one economist. More here.
4. Of Ms Rhee and the unions.
5. Teeching cids goodly and the effect.
6. Widely? Widely!?! I doubt it. I’d bet that better than 99% of the US and 99.99999% of the world don’t even notice.
7. Scam.
8. Marriage and church and moving demographics.
9. To have your prayer heard.
10. A parent moment.
11. Racial inequality which will go unnoticed by the left, because their notions of racism and response are already fixed.
12. Talking with a Democrat.

Good morning.

1. Sin and the church … continued here.
2. Saint Nicholas and cinema.
3. Unemployment.
4. A suggested tactic for Mr Obama.
5. State budgets.
6. Taxes on the ‘wealthy’ and one view of the left from the right.
7. A view of the left from the libertarian perspective … on property rights.
8. The tax compromise viewed from the center.
9. Logic fail.
10. Supersymmetry and India.
11. Jews and fear.
12. Jesus and Paul.
13. Ozone and the south pole.
14. Secrets and critical weaknesses.

Catholicism and Protestants have as one of their primary disagreements the roles of Scripture and Tradition as authority in the Church. Metropolitan John Ziziolas writes in Lectures,

From the Reformation on, Western theologians asked whether divine revelation has one source or two. Protestants rejected the authority of tradition of the Church and introduced the principal of ‘sola scriptura‘, Scripture on its own, without the experience of all previous generations of the Church in expounding that Scripture. […] The West tends to regard Scripture and doctrine as two distinct sources and tries to arbitrate between what it understands as their rival claims.

There are two reasons why Western churches saw the relationship of Scripture and doctrine as a problem. The West tended to regard revelation as primarily rational or intellectual, and the Scriptures and the Church simply as repositories of truths, available as individual units of inert information. In the Orthodox tradition, however, Scripture and the Church are regarded as the testimonies of those prophets and people who have experience the truth of Christ. But truth is not a matter of objective, logical proposals, but of personal relationships between God, man, and the world.

St. Siluan was quoted as saying that if Scripture were lost, the Athonite monastics and the Church itself could and would recreate it without loss. Why and how? Because Scripture is a record of relationships between “God, man, and the world.” These relationships are not historical or accidental and frozen but living and vibrant in today’s world just as recorded in Scripture. 

I think as well that the misunderstanding of what mystery means is important here, where the Eastern view is that mystery is something that you experience but cannot put into words and the West regards it as a part of their belief/faith which cannot be understood and therefore must be kept at arms length. 

Well, weekends are, uhm, busy these days. Links?

1. Feminism flashback.
2. The estate tax.
3. Raich and Obamacare.
4. A unicorn.
5. Just dance.
6. Cuteness.
7. Cinema.
8. Unemployment insurance.
9. Saint Sabbas and his lavra.
10. Human and enemy.
11. The EU and state debt.
12. Openness and Mr Assange.
13. Eclpise on DVD? Huh? Eclipse has been a free download for years.
14. Between the educational laws restricting my choices for my daughter and crap like this, I think the next person who talks “childhood obesity” in my presence is going to receive a free snarl. 

Good morning.

1. Faith and Math?
2. The ironic predator.
3. What goes on in Washington.
4. This struck me as at the very least linguistically odd, “the use of force is not the last resort …” Doesn’t that mean that the writer thinks that there are things at come after the use of force then? That are more extreme or final?
5. When business and the GOP administrations cross pollinate, the Dems object loudly. Just sayin’.
6. Not agreeing with Mr Greenwald.
7. Well, it’s not like the economy needs new jobs anyhow right now.
8. Forgiveness in action.
9. Bucking the dogmas. 
10. Politics and science.
11. Modders, XBox and the law.
12. How many of those rights do you think are really rights?

Good morning.

1. Remembering Aleksander.
2. Defense and health.
3. Housing price index.
4. 33 martyrs.
5. Wikileaks and gitmo.
6. Suicidal liberalism.
7. The man himself.
8. 570.
9. Fanciful thoughts on stuxnet.
10. Dodd-Frank assessed in brief.
11. Three Christmases, perhaps it would help to give them three distinguishing names, like Nativity, the Winter Holidays, and the Decembrist Greed-Wagon. … hmmm perhaps the last needs work.
12. For the Palin fans. Here’s another … and geesh, Mr Sullivan is a truly reprehensible bigot. 
13. 10-4.
14. Obamacare working fer U.

Good morning.

1. Science and religion in debate.
2. Acting in economic interest.
3. No going back, dude.
4. The EU and Ireland. Oh, and a book … I bought it.
5. Not unrelated to the above.
6. Winter, Nativity, and a song.
7. Eschaton predicted.
8. 50 Quotes.
9. Contraception and Catholicism, three posts. One. Two. Three.
10. Brrrriinnng.
11. A financial bubble noted.
12. Nork … here and here.
13. And … Obamacare.

Good morning.

1. Two disparate views of the terrorism threat.
2. A motor.
3. A philosophy joke. 
4. Looks like, but isn’t really.
5. A cartel. 
6. Not getting it. If you make choices for religious (or any other reason for that matter) those choices have consequences.
7. Insurance rates the the crash.
8. The euro jig.
9. Another discussion, science and religion.

A few weeks ago I offered some notions toward considering alternatives to the government structures which are now in place. Here are some more thoughts on this topic. These thoughts are meant to supply suggestions for the following two problems with the current system. First of all, there is a feeling of disconnect between the ordinary citizen and government. Our actions and intentions are not communicated merely by voting and other methods of getting our opinions heard. We rightly feel that there is little to no connection between us our connection and influence on government is basically nothing. This leads to people being disillusioned, to resent taxation, anger at government waste, spending, and allocations of funds. A second problem that exists is that governments while sufficient to handle 19th century complexities are less able to effectively deal with the information asymmetries built in to top/down hierarchical structures. Finally government agencies are a faction of government which has grown extensively in the past few decades and are extra-Constitutional. There are no checks and balances in place to regulate their expanse of powers. 

Facebook and other social networking sites give an example of how social networks can arise and sustain themselves. I haven’t spent much time on facebook but current political groups and PACs are using these media to organize and spread their message. This media fits well with the political environment. Why? It is because this sort of social network can effectively be used to connect people with ideas which they support. Furthermore this sort of network can connect the individual in a tighter fashion to the group. Ideas and messages from individuals are visible. The invisibility problem is not present in this sort of system. 

The missing step here is the institutionalization of such networks, the giving them teeth. Replace the congressional budgetary process with the network. In this suggestion government agencies would be required to form network, open up and sell the the public the necessity for their existence. Contributions (taxes) which go into a central budget pool would be replaced with personal contributions allocated to those agencies via network. This would force (many) of those agencies to open their process to the network in order to generate interest and participation (and therefore contributions) to effect their goals. 

To restate and make this more concrete. Government agencies would not get funding from Congressional allocation of Presidential budgets, but from individuals opting to contribute to that via network. Taxes (the amount contributed) may be set but on a regular basis the allocation of your taxes would be self-directed “friending” government agencies and individuals. There are at least two salutary effects from this arrangement. Agencies would in turn be need to open up and convince people that their work is worthy of said funds. At the same time, government agencies wishing to spend public funds would be forced to sell their ideas instead of putting their practices into action by fiat.

Happy Thanksgiving.

1. More talk about procedure and terror.
2. Why has this man not been defrocked?
3. If they called it stimulus the left of the aisle would be all behind it.
4. St. Catherine and Ms Harvey.
5. QE2 primer.
6. A tell.
7. Thanksgiving.
8. Here too.
9. Some very good Nork links located here. More here.
10. A girl going.
11. Mr Obama and boredom. As I’ve noted before, boredom is a flow not in the universe but the person who is bored. To be more specific, it’s a matter of a lack of maturity. 

Good morning.

1. Stalin and genocide.
2. Why monasticism?
3. North Korea.
4. Dancing with flaming balls of gas, here and here.
5. Tribalism and the green movement.
6. A conversation on Gitmo.
7. On death.
8. Not a fan of human exceptionalism … which is one of the causes of the mass tragedies of the 20th century (for which I refer to Ms Delsol with The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century).
9. Making a stand.
10. Mr Maxwell’s demon.
11. Microsoft developers had a phrase for this, “eating your own dog food”, a practice the beltway should take up, i.e., subject themselves to the same regulatory burdens they shovel on the rest of us. (link corrected)

Good morning.

1. Islam, violence, and education.
2. Monday SCOTUS links.
3. supercallifragiousexpialidoconstiutionalism.
4. Etymology of gerrymander.
5. Talking about Benedict and the condom kerfuffle.
6. Marble wonders.
7. Raising taxes and their effect on deficits.
8. Time spent.
9. Ms Levy.
10. For the Palin fans.
11. GM bailout.
12. Of government and market.
13. Hezbollah, Hamas, and the International courts.

Good morning.

1. A monastery and the Soviet era gulag.
2. US, China and currency manipulation.
3. TSA and following the money. 
4. Moral obligations in the midst of immoral behavior.
5. Myanmar.
6. Cinema anticipation.
7. Witness.
8. Links with a philosophical bent.
9. Falling asleep in the Lord with company.

My primary car that I drive (our family has two) is a 2000 Honda Insight which I purchased used a few years back. Mid summer after some heavy rainfall I drove through some deep water and tore a plastic panel off the underside of the car. Two months ago the “IMA” and “Check Engine” lights came on. IMA is the term for the Honda hybrid system, the acronym IMA means Integrated Motor Assist. Thus begins the battery saga.

So … I took the car to the Honda dealer with which I had previously been taking the car for checkups and tuneups. They informed me that the panel could be replaced but that three units related to the IMA system cause the IMA light to trigger. They said the MCM, BCM, and the big NiMH battery pack all needed replacing and that would come to about $6.8k. The two control modules would came to about $4.4 and $2.2k for the battery pack in the cost breakdown. I had them replace the panel and told them I’d “think about” the other repairs.  Read the rest of this entry

Good morning.

1. Free speech and the left, although generalizing the notions of idiots in the beltway to the rest of the populus is probably wrong … the majority would prefer to just silence FOX I’d think.
2. Voters intelligence. Too bad the beltway denizens are dumber. 
3. Divorce and habits of confrontation.
4. DREAM.
5. Waffling on the TSA scans.
6. Iowa, SSM and their high court.
7. For the Palin fans, a sympathetic NYTimes piece noted. Of the five points listed at the start, 2 and 5 will be disbelieved by the epistemically closed left.
8. A AGW quote/poll,  “For example, why don’t they appreciate that it’s irrelevant that “97%” of the grant parasites, cowards, and left-wing activists pretending to be scientists in various institutions with scientific names subscribe to the AGW crap?” Heh.
9. A strange road to charity.
10. My (admittedly outsiders) view of the sport of golf.
11. 12 on joy.
12. Rural China.
13. Seriously? The TSA considering offering search exceptions to those wearing burkas?