Well we’re all here. Sunny, salty, and slightly warm.

1. Why move them now?
2. Not … the great escape.
3. Romney talks at the NCAAP, one take.
4. But … gay marriage … that’s all that liberal/progressives want to talk about.
5. Watching the meltdown.
6. Zooooom.
7. Guns and girls in Texas.
8. Ooblick being studied (aka non-Newtonian fluids)
9. Just in time.
10. That’s not post-modern that’s pre-modern.
11. Obama as socialist.
12. A book suggested, Mr Lewis on some somewhat familiar liturgical poems.
13. Spinning your way out of jail.
14. Moving some goalposts.
15. Blood and coming of age and two films.
16. A modest proposal.
17. Will he follow Gov. Walker’s lead?
18. Pro-choice, choosing violence.

Good morning.

1. I’d never heard of that film. How about you?
2. The International courts and Syria.
3. What to cut?
4. Guns and grain. This is very much related.
5. Supply and demand.
6. Is this a one-off or a harbinger?
7. Sight and aim.
8. Amazing. Simply amazing.
9. Contra simple materialism.
10. Outsourcing.
11. Why the current attempts to slice the pie in medical reforms such as Obamacare are well described as arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
12. Helping a drunk.
13. Clones and Olympic competition.

Good morning.

1. Women and combat … testosterone matters.
2. On aggression.
3. Wonder why the White House is equipping IRS SWAT teams? What for? What’s coming down the pike?
4. Maybe they figure the piper will have to pay when people figure out the song and dance they’ve been given is untrue?
5. Advice for the married(s).
6. On Caucasian stereotypes.
7. Flashmob.
8. I’m in the first 45%.
9. A thought experiment.
10. Timor.
11. Movements in American Orthodoxy.
12. This raises, indirectly, an interesting question. Stimulus advocates argue that it doesn’t matter what the stimulus gets spent on, just so the money gets moved. That necessarily would include “not raising taxes on the rich?” Oops.
13. Bonhoeffer.

Good morning.

1. A letter posted.
2. The fluidity of language.
3. Mr Roberts reluctance.
4. Much to lose means having much in the first place.
5. Visiting other places and rites.
6. Talking tough, sort of.
7. Who is “really Black” or really Native American, or White, or whatever … the problems with the left’s race identity politics. Someday, we’ll judge people by the content of their character … but before the left can let go of their racism, they have to admit that their racial identity crap is racist.
8. Grrrr.
9. Civilization ending? Yikes.
10. Betting on ignorance.
11. Now there’s a question that displays lack of self-examination. “Where’s the atheist fiction.” Hello? That describes most fiction, almost all science fiction and probably 98%+ of regular fiction. Look at the NYTimes best seller lists for the last year. Name three books in which religion and theology factor in a meaningfull way. I’ll wait. Name a mainstream science fiction book written in the last 20 years in which any character is religious, in most of them religion doesn’t even exist and/or is never mentioned. How about thrillers?
12. Pedagogy.
13. Look at the places you can go if your premise if false. I suspect a true statement would be that the motives behind charity are varied and that there is not one.
14. St. Patrick.

Good morning.

1. As people in US talk about the lifeguard who was fired because his employer (probably rightly) feared liability suits. This struck me as similar in some ways, culture/politics/law coming to the wrong conclusion.
2. Academic freedom? Or just a complete lack of pedagogical sanity?
3. Smelling another big war (read as global conflagration) in the next decade or so.
4. Hope and prayer … found and needed.
5. In which the left thinks that painting themselves as the Nazi Jew haters is a good move. I’m just a bit confused by that strategy.
6. Some advice regarding the tax/Obamacare ruling. I have a question for those watching the “tax vs penalty” debate? Is the child rebate in the tax code a penalty or a tax on those without children?
7. DADT and the chaplaincy.
8. Lots of places are citing the large storms resulting in power outages over the Eastern US as signs of global warming, ’cause that storm was so unusual. Alas it wasn’t.
9. This reminds me of William Safire’s grammar puns, for example “A preposition is something that you should never end a sentence with.”
10. Recommended books.
11. A health care “what if” considered.
12. The culture war and demographic collapse.
13. A lights show … what I noticed most was the lightning.
14. ’cause in Florida they dislike shopping at Staples and Home Depot.
15. And we’ll finish with a slight understatement.

Help for atheist preachers
From CNN,

The transition from preacher to outspoken atheist has not been easy, and DeWitt is trying to smooth the way for other former believers. He is executive director of Recovering from Religion, an organization founded in 2009. Its slogan: “Thousands of organizations will help you get INTO religion, but we’re the only one helping you OUT.”

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Youth Ministry:  Content and Context
What a concept.

From the post,

Our teaching and Bible study should help students engage with Scripture. Long ago I moved away from the traditional youth talk of sharing my ideas supported by a few verses. I started teaching from passages, allowing God’s Word to speak more directly to students. If you have not experienced the difference, you might not understand what I mean. Expounding Scripture can be done in a variety of ways, yet the result is the same—getting a clear sense of the Bible’s meaning and figuring out how it applies to our lives.

Allowing God’s Word to speak? What (another) concept. Imagine what would happen if we moved from trying to be relevant to an unbelieving culture and actually depending on God’s Word?

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Grade Inflation? Say it isn’t so!
When I was a high school student (way back when) there were just a few students that achieved a 4.0 GPA (with 4.0 as the max). Nowadays it seems like the 4s just flit about unfettered from the shackles of herculean effort.

And, of course, along with this news we’ll also be hearing that the quality of students graduating from our public school system is extraordinary?

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GradeInflation.com
Yikes! There’s even a website devoted to the subject.

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And people were afraid of a Vice President Sarah Palin?
From the article,

Vice President Joe Biden told the graduating seniors of Cypress Bay High School in Florida today that they should imagine a world where hunger no longer exists because crops grow without the need of soil, water or fertilizer.

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The connected generation
How will it impact, if it will, the near future economy of the United States?

From the post,

The most interesting part of the survey, though, is the finding that parents will go to great lengths to help their kids find work. Nearly a third (30 percent) of recent graduates report that their parents are in some way involved in their job search process. Nearly one in 10 (8 percent) recent graduates say that a parent has accompanied them to a job interview, with 3 percent of grads saying their parents have actually joined the interview itself.

Good morning. We’ll try a comma, pause, comma edition.

1. My youngest daughter starts driving this fall, so,  is this good advice or not?
2. A problem of our time for, well, many.
3. So would that poster/graphic work, perhaps, as the main thread of a graduation speech?
4. Diaspora, and then, return.
5. Here’s an interesting question, does your the meta-X work consistently with the micro-X and macro-X as exemplified here with ethics and political theory (and I couldn’t figure out how to transform that into comma, pause, comma … sorry). Note, that’s not specific tenents of micro/macro but the meta layer.
6. While Congress wastes its time on college loan matters, surprise, they ignore arguably more important flaws within the secondary educational system.
7. Remember how the liberal of so many stripes bemoaned certain language in political discourse after a certain shooting, well, will this be remarked?
8. Tears don’t work, really its true, in Legislative bodies in a close vote.
9. Slurp and Zaap!
10. This didn’t turn out how I’d expect, really, not at all.
11. Considering wages and minimums, and well, justice.
12. The reality of the so called reality based party is, alas, based on lies.
13. Mr Romney has shown himself to be very weak regarding his notions of foreign policy, however, so has his opponent.

With every head bowed, and every eye closed…
And so begins the invitation to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus. Just like Paul did? Peter?

The “Sinner’s Prayer”, long used not in Christendom, but in American Evangelism, is the subject of a post by David Platt. From Platt,

It seems that “praying the prayer” is often used in a worship service or an evangelistic conversation to “cement a decision” or “close the deal” regarding someone’s salvation. People are often told immediately, “If you prayed that prayer, you can always know that you are saved for eternity.”

Lest anyone think he is anti-evangelism, he also states,

Most importantly, once someone repents and believes in Christ, be willing to lead that person as a new follower of Christ. Remember, our goal is not to count decisions; our goal is to make disciples.

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VBS under attack – the new norm?
One trend that seems to be in vogue, amongst evangelicals, is to alter the traditional Vacation Bible School (VBS) marketing to cater to “non-churched” (those who used to be known as non-Christians) in a manner which doesn’t overtly imply prosyletizing. Yet, society appears to not be that stupid. Case in point is this story from New York.

A Baptist church in New York City is facing backlash after they passed out flyers inviting children from a nearby public school to attend Vacation Bible School. Some neighborhood parents accused the church of being discriminatory because they oppose gay marriage.

Heh. We evangelicals may end up being forced into living counter-culturally, whether we want to or not!

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Not enough Sun?
What’s the gov’t subsidized world coming to when a solar panel outfit can’t survive in the middle of the Southwest United States?

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Google search gets a B+ while Apple’s Siri gets a D?
But, of course, none of the Apple-heads out there will get wind of this news since they live in a closed system type of world. ;^)

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The Parent as the “Youth Pastor”
Considering that the vocation of youth pastor is a very new phenomenon, it seems that the notion of parental involvement in the theological training of children has merit. Oh, yes, it’s also kind of Biblical. From the post,

…if we are going to stem the tide of youth leaving the church, I believe a key component is a fresh awareness of the centrality of the parents for youth ministry. Parents are the church’s primary youth pastors, and a central place in youth ministry today must be given to helping parents embrace that privilege and responsibility, and equipping them to do it. Youth ministry has a valid and important supporting role to the parents, but it must never become a substitute. Our youth are too important to allow that to happen.

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A camera that keeps your home safe?
From the post title, “Solar-powered security camera keeps your home safe without wires”. Interesting. I’d be interested to know how a camera can manage to keep my home safe.

Good day (if just a tad hot).

1. On rights and the 4th. Those who thing rights important or useful need to deal with Rousseau’s (if I remember correctly) criticism that rights are insufficient against government which can redefine/define them as they see fit for their purposes … and we see that in action today.
2. A reading/viewing list … interesting intersection, I’m trying to read Moby Dick in parallel with China Meiville’s Railsea, ?as the latter seemed from the outset to draw a lot from the former and my memory of Mr Ahab and company is dim.
3. Slipped through the liberal eugenics screening programme.
4. Making it a law … as if everything were free and adding ~$2k to the cost of a table saw is inconsequential.
5. A liberal/progressive maxim … “the US is no longer the greatest country in the world” which oddly enough never proposes an alternative. The reason is that the statement is false. Others may be catching up, but in the words of UK educational maxims (as expressed in this wonderful book) if the US is not “top nation” who is? China with $4/day labor? India? France? Germany? Sweden? Cuba? Get real. If you want to name the US as not “top nation” you need to indicate which nation replaced the US.
6. Of taxation and consent.
7. Which founder?
8. Oooh, I did this (sort of) for my kids. When they were little and worried about the noise from the freight trains going through town … I told them, don’t worry, if it gets off the rails, the “snake” will get it.
9. To what purpose.
10. A Saint and romance.
11. Unnoticed and forgotten peoples.
12. There will always be war?
13. On union labor and freedom.

Good morning.

1. Kinda like “life is too short waste drinking bad beer”
2. Scientific malpractice.
3. On American heresies.
4. A famous American Orthodox man passed away. He will be remembered.
5. ’cause companies like Staples and Home Depot are such job killers.
6. Well, self-esteem was the 7th sin (of 8) in the list before Pope Gregory dropped it.
7. Two posts on the Higgs in the news, here and here.
8. The only thing in this notice of antisemitism is any notice of actual antisemitism (and I’m sorry “investment in Caterpillar” doesn’t cut it).
9. The Russian Federation modernizes their army.
10. Health care and top down designs.
11. A church in the midst of economic movement.
12. Thinking race shouldn’t be a factor does not make one a racist … it’s the other way around, thinking race is a factor when that is unwarranted is racism.

Good morning.

1. Of poisonous politics and personal consequences.
2. I think there is a theological error lurking here, something to do with western views of individualism.
3. Cookstoves and third world activism.
4. Another approach to gun buyback programs, that is to fund NRA youth camps. Whaddya think?
5. Asian conservatives coming on over “most think you get ahead with hard work” …. yep that would be about right.
6. Drones in our future.
7. Examining colonialism claims.
8. Misinterpreting Zeno … which was about limits and continuity not quantitative vs qualitative.
9. The fate of ATF whistleblowers.
10. Regulations and the Colorado fire.
11. Considering the hear-after.

Mainstream Media ignores 2,000 deaths in Afghanistan
Unlike they did at the same metric for Iraq. Difference? Bush vs. Obama.

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Well at least someone linked with the Mainstream Media doesn’t like it
From the post, regarding the Mainstream Media,

Forget it. I’m done. You deserve what they’re saying about you. It’s earned. You have worked long and hard to merit the suspicion, acrimony, mistrust and revulsion that the media-buying public increasingly heaps upon you. You have successfully eroded any confidence, dispelled any trust, and driven your audience into the arms of the Internet and the blogosphere, where biases are affirmed and like-minded people can tell each other what they hold to be true, since nobody believes in objective reality any more. You have done a superlative job of diminishing what was once a great profession and undermining one of the vital underpinnings of democracy, a free press.

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Are all schizophrenics creative? Or are all creative people schizophrenic?
From the article,

Brain scans reveal striking similarities in the thought pathways of highly creative people and those with schizophrenia.

Both groups lack important receptors used to filter and direct thought.

It could be this uninhibited processing that allows creative people to “think outside the box”, say experts from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.

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Relief Efforts for Theological Famine
The internet age has opened up teaching opportunities our ancestors could not have dreamed of.

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Three reasons offered for young adults giving up on God
The reasons given,

1. Fundamentalists are turning off some young people

2. Atheists and agnostic role models are getting more vocal

3. Liberal attacks on religion are to blame

Herein lies the fallacy of current secular (and some evangelical) worldviews – that truth is defined by what one considers to be true rather than what is true. Follow this slip-n-slide notion and you must conclude that if our society can evolve towards acceptance of specified behaviors, then nothing prevents it from evolving towards rejection of specified behaviors.  What these adherents to plurarlism don’t seem to realize is that their “truth is what I think it to be” paradigm has no defense against itself.

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How’s that Private Sector doing, now?

Good morning.

1. Start with some fun.
2. Mr Holder and the 17 Dems … one claim is that all 17 face difficult re-election campaigns.
3. Ice melt.
4. Experimental Platonic ethics considered.
5. Some Television recommended viewing.
6. Fur the carnivore.
7. Some pessimism regarding bureaucratic growth.
8. Hunting for a realistic broccoli example.
9. So its a tax. Let’s see, you’re 20 something have a modest income and good health. Pay $800 tax or $8k for heathcare. Hmm.
10. So girls, to be safe, drive and carry concealed.
11. And we’ll end (bookend?) with some grace and poise.

Good morning.

1. Google makes a political statement. Or is that religion? Or do they just not like to empower women?
2. Putting the Obamacare decision in perspective.
3. A real virus and horror fiction.
4. I haven’t read either report, although it brings to mind an experiment. My prediction (untested so far) is that Mr Scalia’s remarks are about Constitutionality of Mr Obama’s actions and none of Mr Dionne’s objections are about Con-law. Am I right?
5. Of oil pipelines and ancient Germanic gold.
6. A “zipper truck”.
7. Philosophy imitates comics … that is to say this particular ethics question was kinda the point of Joss Whedon’s X-Men story arc.
8. I really dislike the pretense of putting probabilities to judgements. You either think a thing is or it isn’t and you don’t do have any probabilistic metrics to apply.
9. The creative class myth.
10. Wood tube.
11. Circumcision and Germans some thoughts. More musings here.
12. A scientific funding proposal … so are you carbon/AGW supporters on board with that or not? It occurred to me that the atheists who by and large support AGW theory often use the argument “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” for God but not climate.
13. Totalitarian walls don’t hold against culture forever.

Woo hoo. I’m still here. Actually, weekend travel + Monday I was on site all day sans Internet, and then I’ve come down with laryngitis and between trying to work and sleep blogging has taken the hit.

1. Circumcision and Germany, two views here and here.
2. Magic … the interesting inclusion of “contagion” prompted me to link this … sounds kind like quantum entanglement, eh?
3. Unimpressed by a TV mini-series.
4. And a film review.
5. A thank you from Mr Barnett … I’d link a thank you from the other side of the aisle but didn’t find one. Is that to be expected? Why?
6. Big gun.
7. Speaking of guns (and bikes!?).
8. Economists you like.
9. The EU and unexpected exit advice.
10. Hunting for the honest liberal with respect to “judicial activism”?
11. Having a bad day … nature edition.
12. Freedom and university.
13. Chicago and stupidity around gun laws.
14. Modify the past to effect predictions is not warranted, …. right?
15. First birther. Heh.
16. Statistics of violent encounters.