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.

Tupperware parties are sooo Bush-era. The USDA is now suggesting  you throw a Food Stamp party to let folks know in on the free stuff. (Link is to a PDF file.)

Throw a Great Party. Host social events where people mix and mingle. Make it fun by having activities, games, food, and entertainment, and provide information about SNAP. Putting SNAP information in a game format like BINGO, crossword puzzles, or even a “true/false” quiz is fun and helps get your message across in a memorable way.

The document gives you new and "fresh" ways to tell seniors about the program. Try that at your next get-together.

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?

Jesus is not your boyfriend
Or your homeboy.

Has our evangelical culture, in its eagerness to emotionalize our personal relationship with God Jesus, trended towards an essentially erotic view of said relationship? From the post at Her.meneutics,

It was not uncommon at my conservative Christian college to overhear girls say that Jesus was their “boyfriend” until God brought the right man along. I once had a girl tell me she could not hang out on a Friday night because she had a “date” with God. In our churches, many of our praise and worship songs border on the “love song” language, leading many girls to equate those warm and fuzzy feelings that come with attraction with Jesus. This is a dangerous place to be. Not only is it an incomplete picture of who our Christ is, it also sends the message that the girls (and women) who are truly devoted to Jesus equate contentment in him with a romantic relationship with him.

Reading the comments left at the post is also interesting. A sampling,

We used to sing this at a young adult study I used to go to:

“I wanna sit at your feet Drink from the cup in your hand. Lay back against you and breath, feel your heart beat This love is so deep, it’s more than I can stand. I melt in your peace, it’s overwhelming”

I could never sing the song and it took me completely out of worship. I’m a dude and this in NO WAY represents my walk with Christ. It’s borderline creepy to me and almost sexual. It did, however, REALLY make me curious as to how women see a relationship with christ differently than a man does due to gender differences.

Posted By: b | June 25, 2012 1:26 PM

and,

just can’t handle the “So in love with you” songs about Jesus any more. It just seems too close to the eroticism of love songs.

One of our younger male pastors (when he was working with youth) would often talk about “being so in love with Jesus” and used other language that had a boyfriend feel to it. I told him this way of talking could have a rather creepy feel about it, especially to the adolescent boys just coming to terms with their sexuality – he looked at me like I was crazy. It may also have a certain appeal to young females so wanting to have a boyfriend experience.

…

Posted By: Annie | June 25, 2012 3:11 PM

Yet what of the Biblical references to Israel’s rebellion being akin to having an adulterous affair, or the overt sexuality found in Song of Solomon, or that the New Covenant church is referenced as the bride of Christ?

It’s my understanding that such analogies always refer to the corporate body (i.e., the nation of Israel or the church as a whole) and are not indicative of the personal relationship each individual follower of Christ has with God. Note that in the upper room discourse Jesus calls his disciples friends, or how Paul refers to Christ followers as sons of God, or how virtually all of Jesus’ disciples and followers addressed him as Lord, Rabbi, Teacher, etc., and not as Lover.

I think that because our culture emphasizes the emotional aspect of relationships (and, that is not necessarily a bad thing) we sometimes mistake the relationship, or direction, of various Biblical analogies. We need to remember that the various earthly analogies we have are but reflections of the heavenly aspect being presented. Thus, when Paul writes that all Christ followers, both men and women, are sons of God, he is not ignoring or deprecating the status of women, nor is he equating us to the Son of God. Rather, he is indicating that, as in the culture of his time, just as all sons received the family inheritance, so all sons of God (Christ followers) will receive God’s inheritance.

As the author of the post states,

Just as self-marriage misses the mark for what God designed marriage to point to, “marriage” to Jesus misses what his work accomplished. Marriage to Jesus while waiting for a husband can often trivialize our Savior in a way that makes him more like a sweet boyfriend who takes us out on dates, rather than the God-man who paid for our sin on the cross. Jesus did not accomplish redemption to marry us individually. He died for the church corporate, of which we are apart [sic]. His death accomplished something much greater than simply meeting our deep-seated desires for a significant other. That is what Paul is getting at in Ephesians 5:22–33 when speaks of the mystery of marriage.

In the latest episode of my new podcast project, I give my first look at what the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare(tm)) means. If you think there are places where government should just butt out of, you are not going to like what this bill let’s the government do.

A comment on a Facebook question posted by La Shawn Barber gives us a new perspective on how to deal with illegal immigrants.

You know those machines where you take the next number to be waited on? The government has one. It’s costs $19 million. Every year. Really.

And you know all those human interest stories that the media keep running to tell us that we really need ObamaCare? Do they compare to the 130,000 elderly patients in Britain that die every year so that costs can be kept down or beds can be freed up? Yup, 130,000. Every year. Really.

Click here for show notes, and ways to listen to the podcast; through iTunes, another podcatcher, or right on the web page. It’s politics in 10 minutes or less (8 minutes and 40 seconds, this time).

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.

Calling the individual mandate a "tax" (which is something Obama himself expressly said it was not, by the way), the Supreme Court has upheld the core of the Affordable Care Act. There was a small limitation placed on Medicare changes, but overall it survived intact.

First of all, the election in November has come fully in focus because of this. There’s a clear distinction between the candidates now; one wants to keep this, and one wants to repeal it. The final fate of the ACA now falls into the hands of the voters, and there may be a huge backlash.

Secondly, the power of the Congress under the Commerce Clause was (at least) restricted, since the SCOTUS ruled that the way the mandate was written was outside that power. That at least was some silver lining around this cloud. It’s power via taxation, however, has now become absolute, going where I don’t think it’s gone before. There is no limiting principal on what they can do, or, more specifically, what they can make you do. The Constitution was written by guys who knew their history, and how government’s tendency is to grow and take over more and more power. It was written to limit the federal government. But now, that power has had one of its biggest shackles unlocked. As a precedent, it is incredibly dangerous.

And because of this, I want to say to anyone who has ever complained that the government should get out of any area of their lives where it has no business, just remember that now it can direct your every purchase if it so chooses. After it takes out taxes, it can still tell you how to spend the rest. If you supported this bill, then you have opened that door. You can no longer complain about government meddling in anything. You helped give it that power.

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.

No, not Al Gore.

Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.

Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honoured working scientist and academic.

His inventions have been used by NASA, among many other scientific organizations.

Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 first enabled scientists to measure CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other pollutants in the atmosphere, leading, in many ways, to the birth of the modern environmental movement.

But this father of a movement has some scolding for his children. In a previous interview, he noted, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.” This was in acknowledgement of the fact that global temperatures just haven’t gone up the way the computer models predicted. Acknowledging that error is certainly a step in the right direction, but let’s not forget that the massive drain on our economy that Greens the world over would have wanted to implement based on those flawed models would have made this recession even worse.

Now, he’s not renouncing man-made global warming, but he is asking folks who do agree with him to just calm down a bit and look at some realities. His advice?

• He’s for more nuclear power and natural gas "fracking".
• Ratchet back the whole green "religion" guilting.
• Modern economies will not be powered by windmills and "so-called ‘sustainable development’." That is "meaningless drivel".
• No, the science isn’t settled. That’s not how science works.

Read the whole thing.

Just the higher-profile ones.

The Arizona Immigration Law: The court struck down 3 of the 4 provisions, and upheld the portion that requires police to check the immigratio status of someone they think is here illegally. However…

The court struck down these provisions: requiring all immigrants to obtain or carry immigration registration papers, making it a state criminal offense for an illegal immigrant to seek work or hold a job and allowing police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without warrants.

Governor Jan Brewer is trying to put the best face on it, by saying:

“Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court is a victory for the rule of law. It is also a victory for the 10th Amendment and all Americans who believe in the inherent right and responsibility of states to defend their citizens,” Gov. Brewer said in a statement. “After more than two years of legal challenges, the heart of SB 1070 can now be implemented in accordance with the U.S. Constitution.”

This, however, isn’t necessarily the end of the road for legal challenges of this particular provision, and the Justices said as much. So the governor is really trying to do damage control.

I understand that we don’t necessarily want 50 different standards on immigration to this country, but the federal government, in picking and choosing what laws it will enforce, forces states to do the job that the people’s representatives said the Fed ought to be doing. Arizona may have overstepped its constitutional authority somewhat, but I expect (I hope) that this will get the people to start electing a federal government that will indeed enforce the laws that are passed.

No automatic life without parole for juveniles: This does not mean that life without parole entirely; only that states cannot impose that penalty automatically for certain crimes. The liberal justices said it was "cruel and unusual", the conservatives ones said, "Neither the text of the Constitution or our precedent prohibits legislatures from requiring that juvenile murderers be sentenced to life without parole." Tough call. Constitutionally, can see both sides, but in practice, it does seem that life for a minor without the possibility of parole is very harsh. But since the ruling does allow it for individual cases, I can get behind it.

Rejects corporate spending limits: This was basically a reaffirmation of the Citizens United case from 2010, but saying that it applies to the states as well. Corporations have interests in how elections go, and should be allowed to contribute to issue-oriented campaigns. Restricting speech, especially political speech, is a slippery slope away from government accountability. Money is a corrupting influence in Washington, no doubt, but that’s mostly what politicians can do with taxpayer money. Political speech, should it be restricted by Washington, could make it more corrupt, since it would then get to decide what others say about them. The solution to bad speech is more good speech, not curtailing all speech.

Coming Thursday, the big ObamaCare ruling. Expect a frenzy around 10am Eastern Time on Thursday.

35 Years later – Interstellar Space in sight
From FoxNews,

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has encountered a new environment more than 11 billion miles from Earth, suggesting that the venerable probe is on the cusp of leaving the solar system.

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Does MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell not think?
In this day and age, and in Western culture, cameras – especially video cameras – are ubiquitous. Anyone at a public event had better think twice before selectively editing a video of said event.

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Is the world overpopulated or are we just lousy stewards?
Interesting graphic comparing the world’s population with the density of major cities.

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On the power of Christian apologetics
As a Facebook friend of mine said,

…the ‘objective morality can only come from a Person’ argument did the trick!

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Should you home school your child?
A college prof weighs in.

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Newspapers – “Yesterday’s news, tomorrow.”

Good morning.

1. Protestant and the Theotokos.
2. See, for liberals … whose motivations are unquestionably (unlike conservatives) in the right place, laws are kinda like guidelines, so who needs careful guidelines anyhow?
3. If you have time … Fast and Furious explained.  While somebody didn’t do their homework at all.
4. So was the President involved in Fast and Furious … or is he lying (a point missed by the cartoonist)? Executive privilege invocation is there to protect conversations between the President and his advisers.  So either he was involved and is invoking this correctly (which in turn is not such a good thing) or he’s dishonestly invoking the privilege.
5. But we know he tells lies (big ones too getting “4 Pinocchio’s” ) … so … believe what you will.
6. Uruguay makes a move.
7. Why does motivated reasoning always affect the “other guy”. It’s “you are affected” not “we are affected”.
8. A reminder why an elephant is a mouse to government specs in the context of the new Obama DREAM directive.
9. Our network of premises.
10. Zooom.
11. Pretend to be gay or Christian akin to the Turing test.

Good morning.

1. Executive privilege and flip flops. Soon we’ll see Mr Obama’s remarks on Mr Bush’s use of privilege I suspect. Interesting to watch defenders of Mr Bush’s use of this now attack Mr Obama and vice versa. A pox on all your houses.
2. Like that noted here.
3. So … has Mr Obama said he is involved in the Fast/Furious programme by his words that is what it would take to involve executive privilege.
4. Faint praise for Mr Obama.
5. Never fear, the left won’t hear you … that’s a message they’ve conditioned themselves to not hear.
6. It is not however on account of epistemic closure, a term misused widely. Now that you know what epistemic closure actually is, we can all stop misusing the term.
7. Exegesis and the detective narrative.
8. Technical know-how and the US.
9. Basic education and college costs.
10. Intelligent TSA screening … hmm.
11. And computers are relatively simple … but make a good argument about central planning.
12. Praising the hybrid, and missing the points of why the don’t “kick ass”, which is that hybridization of vehicles only pays if they are already far too heavy (you get less and less payback from hybridizing as the vehicle gets lighter).
13. On religious freedom …