[Wow, long time, no blogging. But I’m back into a routine again, so here goes.]

If Bill Maher has lost atheist sports writers, he’s lost America. Sally Jenkins, writing in the Washington Post explains her puzzlement at him.

If God is liable to smite anybody around here, it’s me. When it’s smiting time, I duck, because I don’t believe in any religion that requires a building and loan payments. Nevertheless, I’m having a hard time seeing anything wrong with Tim Tebow taking a prayer knee in public. The knee seems a pretty plain and graceful statement, and it’s tiresome to see it so willfully misinterpreted. It’s the preachers from the top of Mount Idiot like Bill Maher who are hard to understand.

If you want to know Maher’s overriding philosophy on anything, you have to go back to high school and the stoner in the last row, surrounded by sycophants as he makes ugly cracks about his betters. That was the vein of the tweet that Maher chucked at Tebow on Christmas Eve, after the Broncos quarterback was intercepted three times in a loss to the Buffalo Bills. Maher wrote, “Wow, Jesus just [expletive] Tim Tebow bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere in hell Satan is Tebowing, saying to Hitler, ‘Hey, Buffalo’s killing them.’ ”

Set aside the intriguing question of whether Maher would have the nerve if Tebow were Muslim. Or whether he’s funny. (He’s not, really. Monty Python is.) What’s more interesting is why Maher, and other political commentators from Bill Press to David Shuster, feel compelled to rip on Tebow simply for kneeling.

Based on the first 2 sentences, I’m assuming atheism on the part of Jenkins. If I’m wrong, I apologize. However, whether or not she is doesn’t really take away from the point that the press and others seem to really have a huge problem with one guy taking his religion seriously, rather than shutting it in the closet while he’s at work.

Ironically, these would be the same people who would (rightly) castigate Tebow for having an affair, or pilfering from teammates, or swearing up a storm; anything that would tend to be at odds with his testimony. And yet when he does things that line up with his religion, they still crack on him. You just can’t win with some atheists, eh?

Now understandably, Tebow is a public figure and some of this comes with the territory. I’m not saying that Tebow is beyond criticism. But you can go over the line, and I think Maher and many others have done that. Criticism is one thing. But just like there is a right way and a wrong way to tackle an opponent, a cheap shot is quite another thing altogether.

But why all this vitriol? Jenkins asks and answers.

What is so threatening about Tebow? It can’t be his views. Tebow has never once suggested God cares about football. Quite the opposite. It’s Maher and company who stupidly suggest a Tebow touchdown scores one for Evangelicals whereas an interception somehow chalks one up for atheism. Anyone who listens to Tebow knows he doesn’t do Jesus talk, he’s mostly show and no tell. His idea of proselytizing is to tweet an abbreviated Bible citation. Mark 8:36. He leaves it up to you whether to look it up. When he takes a knee, it’s perfectly obvious that it’s an expression of humility. He’s crediting his perceived source, telling himself, don’t forget where you came from. On the whole, it’s more restrained than most end-zone shimmies.

So why does Tebow’s expression of faith make people so silly-crazy? Why do they care what he does?

Because he emphasizes the aspect of his talent that is given, not earned.

And that makes people nervous. The reactions to Tebow seem to fall under the category of what theologian Michael J. Murray calls “Theo-phobia.” In his essay “Who’s Afraid of Religion?” Murray argues we’re ill at ease with intrusions of personal faith. We fear they could lead to oppression, or mania, or even prove us wrong.

Basically, when you shine a light, it points out how dark it really has been. Here’s a guy who’s thankful for the talent he’s been given, rather than thinking he’s earned or deserved it (and we have seen countless times how that attitude has become self-destructive). If you tsk-tsk when a player is found with a gun at a bar, how can you possibly belittle a guy staying away from that because of his religion, who’s publicly showing it and is thus asking to be held accountable?

You can belittle him, if you feel you have to, if doing so allows you to keep your feeling of superiority. If you’ve ever seen Maher in action, you know he’s got that. Which explains his animosity. If he doesn’t want to continue to look childish, he should just stay away from religious topics completely.

Good morning.

1. Well, church and state, or “how then shall I vote?”
2. New England greenery and the West coast transplant.
3. Skinny skinny gymnast.
4. Dicy ditching despicable over-regulation.
5. For that bullet proof party dress.
6. That thing called science.
7. So Obamacare expanded coverage and will also cut costs, and things like this will never ever happen. Riiight.
8. A book noted. Another one noted here.
9. Captioned for your edification.
10. Weight loss.
11. Iran and the gulf.
12. Freedom of press and speech, why the distinction?
13. Why vote for Mr Santorum, or at least one reason.

Well, holiday hiatus is over. Links?

1. Modern edukashun.
2. Economics and a clash of narratives.
3. Considering boots on ground.
4. Seeking to emulate the Norks.
5. Two sides of a question here and here.
6. Democrats moving to tea party sympathies?
7. The problem with the disillusionment is that it is accompanied by some notion that this outcome isn’t a design flaw.
8. No. Russia using drones isn’t the problem with “drones aren’t an act of war?” It’s Iran, or other non-state actors following that lead.
9. Damned lies.
10. OWS and a social psychology view. (tip of the hat).
11. Retail litmus test.
12. The meaning of a word: political.
13. “Selling like hotcakes” … have you seen any evidence of booming growth of, say, IHOP? Me neither. Perhaps he really meant what he said.
14. It means “return of Zune.”
15. A poster. Ride that bike dude!

Yikes. Travel and work.

1. Not optimistic about the NK situation.
2. So a few deaths of note, a tyrant, a public intellectual of the lesser sort, and and a public intellectual of the greater sort.
3. Perhaps a metaphor for government.
4. So do you recommend camouflage for the grade points or standing your ground?
5. Study the classics.
6. One more reason to despise the architects of Obamacare, they engineered the assumption of yet more federal power.
7. So, which do you prefer, “love of”, “lack of”, or “too much” … and the rest of the post is worth reading too.
8. Iconoclasts in our midst, and btw, the trivial defense is just that, trivial.
9. I think it’s just a market twitch.
10. Now there’s a surprise, Lada and “best in class” in the same sentence.
11. For those who prefer to mock Fox and its coverage. Ooops.
12. The world’s grandmaster at estimation in action.
13. OK, granting the, err, his premise, then the question might be why does he engage in it so frequently?

So, my wife alas, had little fender bender with my dearly beloved high mileage Honda Insight (2000) and I’m in the market for a new car. I’d made the promise to myself to continue to upgrade mileage … but that isn’t going to be possible ’cause nobody makes a higher mileage US car than the manual transmission 2000-2006 Honda Insight (with or without MIMA). I’m thinking of going for a slightly elderly used gas sipper as a stop gap in the hopes that in 4-5 years I’ll be able to get the car I really want, i.e., that can get better than 150mpg (or 2/3 gallons per 100 miles if you prefer) on dry summer roads. Oh, don’t worry, no real damage was done, my wife is uninjured (and nobody else was involved).

Looking around this morning, it seems a 5 speed manual Toyota Yaris, Kia Rio, VW TDI, or Ford Focus look like the best bet. What do y’all think? Any other suggestions? It’s replacing a two seater so it doesn’t have to be large and likely when I turn it over it will be handed down to one of my girls, who are fast (gasp) approaching collegiate age.

Suggestions?

The last American troops left Iraq yesterday. (Well, likely, the last combat troops. I’m sure there are still advisors there.) The Fox news article described it thusly:

The last U.S. soldiers rolled out of Iraq across the border into neighboring Kuwait at daybreak Sunday, whooping, fist bumping and hugging each other in a burst of joy and relief. Their convoy’s exit marked the end of a bitterly divisive war that raged for nearly nine years and left Iraq shattered, with troubling questions lingering over whether the Arab nation will remain a steadfast U.S. ally.

The mission cost nearly 4,500 American and well more than 100,000 Iraqi lives and $800 billion from the U.S. Treasury. The question of whether it was worth it all is yet unanswered.

I think the US ought to get a cut of oil profits for some predetermined amount of time to help repay us for liberating the country from a brutal dictator. But beyond the dollars-and-cents view of "worth it", recall we were instrumental from saving Germany (and most of Europe) from a brutal dictator 70 years ago at the cost of lives orders of magnitude greater than this. Hussein had invaded neighboring countries, used chemical weapons on his own people, and oppressed the Kurds, to name just a very few of his atrocities. Are Iraqis better off without him? You betcha’.

Should we go in and invade every country with a brutal dictator? I don’t think so, but the Middle East is a particularly important area to the global economy (i.e. oil) and is also one of the most volatile. What goes on there can make or break countries far and wide. Add to that Hussein’s view of our ally Israel (i.e. supporting terrorism there), and this combination was enough, I believe, to seriously consider dealing with it militarily. The US Congress thought so as well when they authorized the use of force (notwithstanding those mealy-mouthed Democrats who voted for it and later complained that they never thought they’d be taken seriously by Bush).

For those who lost family and friends in the war, indeed the cost for them is so different and felt stronger than for the rest of us pontificating from the sidelines. But at the same time, the "worth-it-ness" of the war in total has to come from a big picture view. I believe it was worth it, and I think most Iraqis, who’s opinion has to count for more than ours, would agree.

In a somewhat unlikely Star Trek NG episode the crew encounters a race which speaks, unfortunately, entirely through cipher that is coded references to historical events. Blog, well, neighbor Eli is in a huff because some philosopher of science (Signorelli) offers that the “language of maths” isn’t sufficient for human experience. He offers as counter example not a cipher but a number substitution code and suggests that if you encode ordinary language with numbers you’ve translated text into the domain of maths. Well, sorry. That doesn’t it, the medium is not the message. That you are viewing this short essay which is encoded in ASCII and transmitted via HTTP protocols over 802.1 specified media, i.e., numbers. The message is not maths. Read the rest of this entry

Christopher Hitchens was a brilliant writer, and while I disagreed with him often, especially with regards to religion and Christianity, he certainly could make a good and entertaining point. Douglas Wilson, writing on the  Christianity Today website, considered Hitchens to be a classic "contrarian". Wilson had many occasion to work with Hitchens when the two would do the circuit debating this or that point of Christianity. Wilson gives us a look behind the scenes at what Hitchens was really like. He closes noting that Hitchens told his readership that, should he ever say, or be reported to have said, that he ultimately converted on his death bead, to simply not believe it. Even if he did say that, he would not be in his right mind.

This is interesting, not so much because of what it says about what he did or did not do as death approached him, and as he at the same time approached death. It is interesting because, when he gave these interviews, he was manifestly in his right mind, and the thought had clearly occurred to him that he might not feel in just a few months the way he did at present. The subject came up repeatedly, and was plainly a concern to him. Christopher Hitchens was baptized in his infancy, and his name means "Christ-bearer." This created an enormous burden that he tried to shake off his entire life. No creature can ever succeed in doing this. But sometimes, in the kindness of God, such failures can have a gracious twist at the end. We therefore commend Christopher to the Judge of the whole earth, who will certainly do right. Christopher Eric Hitchens (1949-2011). R.I.P.

Good morning.

1. This is in cartoon form, but a serious point is made. What do you suggest to fix this educational gap?
2. Yes, premise 1 seems false.
3. Tebow furor, an extreme example.
4. Undercurrents in Iran, a film noted.
5. What to eat while doing LSD on bike (LSD -> Long Steady Distance, not the hallucinogen).
6. Memories … .
7. ePaper and the better nightlight.
8. Not the normal headline.
9. Tea Party/OWS totalitarian version … noted here and here.
10. Cuteness.
11. This will have dire consequences.
12. Right after you ban talking in cars too.
13. Sleaze to the end.
14. Government spending and a study.
15. Porn must be very popular in Egypt … or something like that.
16. Never beaten athletic team.

Good morning.

1. Panacea? Nope. “Sucks less” might be a better term.
2. A PSA for today.
3. Of Jane Austen and the Russian novel(s).
4. Very very very slow motion photography.
5. So is that it? The OWS sees the fundamental problem that if the “1%” have some money then there is less for them?
6. Mr Tebow terrifying? Really? I’m missing out on the Tebow hoopla I think.
7. Altered pronunciation.
8. How not to get excited about math (and how to miss the point).
9. And on the other hand, this is how to make the argument that one can indeed get impassioned about numbers (or the argument that should have been made above).
10. Zoom (and boom?).
11. Forecasting and honesty.

Good morning.

1. Predators@Home … more here.
2. A book unrecommended.
3. Money and the (illegal) drug pipeline.
4. I have no idea what right wing/left wing means in this context.
5. Shocking, err, well what is sort of shocking is the gourmet fare the “1%ers” get for school lunches.
6. Pointing out the “bizarro econ” world the President inhabits.
7. Reverse smuggling anyone?
8. A Groseclose collaborator gets noticed for his work.
9. Grousing about Ms Clinton.
10. The left wants national health care, I guess that’s because the figure the way to help the bottom 10% is to make sure the bottom 90% have the health care poorer than the bottom 10% have now. That will somehow be “better” because it will  be “fairer.” Riiight.
11. Don’t worry, he’s just a teacher.
12. Music.
13. Toodles then.

Good, well, afternoon.

1. If you tie salary to actual performance, surprise … actual performance begins to track salary. Or perhaps the surprise is how it doesn’t track as well as it might even now.
2. Another book noted.
3. One more.
4. Marcus Aurelius growing in popularity?
5. An appreciative word for the NyTimes?
6. An appreciable part of the 1% and how their protest might look.
7. Economists bicker.
8. Another economist, so … do you agree or not?
9. I’m not really on board with Mr Martin’s corpus of fiction, but GURPS … on that we’ll agree. GURPS was the way to go (back in my RPG playing days).
10. The EU and the growth solution.
11. What they say and what they do.
12. Hello! And this is not unrelated.
13. So … what’s next? Othello? I think the “Othello syndrome” is likely more often seen in our public arena, i.e., a guy moving to take out an opponent at the cost of his own career.

To date, 417 incidents of crime and death from Occupy Wall Street. If someone tells you OWS is just like the Tea Party, they’re lying.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (ironically acronymed "NICE") rejected a drug for MS that has been approved in the US. Seems that the costs outweigh the benefits, at least for them. I’m glad I live here. Well, until we get our own death panels.

Sorry, but I just have to quote 4 paragraphs from Glenn Reynold’s article about the higher-education bubble. When the government subsidizes something, it’s value changes over the long haul; it goes down.

This is a simple case of inflation: When you artificially pump up the supply of something (whether it’s currency or diplomas), the value drops. The reason why a bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability is that the government decided that as many people as possible should have bachelor’s degrees.

There’s something of a pattern here. The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle class people.

But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay in, the middle class.

Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them. One might as well try to promote basketball skills by distributing expensive sneakers.

The President of the Unites States has declared that capitalism doesn’t work, and has never worked. Well, it did when we had it, but for at least 2 or 3 generations now, we haven’t had it.

The hotbed of pedophilia that is … Hollywood.

The New York Times speaks from the past, blasting Obama’s policies because no intelligent American would ever consider socialism.

Good morning.

1. Oooh, a book list, with remarks.
2. The methods of Mr Corzine.
3. Well, OK then … Silent Night indeed.
4. What free market was “never meant to be” … apparently “what the market will bear” has nothing to do with the free market.
5. America!
6. So … will/has the admin tendered a “what we were trying to do” explanation?
7. Publish or perish … perish the thought?
8. What the fans of porn ignore.
9. While one might consider the plans of mice and men, sometimes men’s plans are disturbing.
10. What is the reason for special protections for one profession in that regard? I’m not seeing it.
11. Empathy and the rodent?
12. A loophole to widen.

The problem with pretending everything is OK with Russian relations is that Russian politicians just don’t like to be criticized, especially by their own people. And they’ll find anyone to blame it on.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin strongly criticized U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday, accusing her of encouraging and funding Russians protesting election fraud, and warned of a wider Russian crackdown on dissent.

By describing Russia’s parliamentary election as rigged, Putin said Clinton "gave a signal" to his opponents.

"They heard this signal and with the support of the U.S. State Department began their active work," Putin said in televised remarks. He said the United States is spending "hundreds of millions" of dollars to influence Russian politics with the aim of weakening a rival nuclear power.

Putin’s tough words show the deep cracks in U.S.-Russian ties despite President Barack Obama’s efforts to "reset" relations with the Kremlin. Ahead of the election, President Dmitry Medvedev threatened to deploy missiles to target the U.S. missile shield in Europe if Washington failed to assuage Moscow’s concerns about its plans.

Clinton has repeatedly criticized Sunday’s parliamentary vote in Russia, saying "Russian voters deserve a full investigation of electoral fraud and manipulation."

Tell the truth to the Russians, get blamed for everything. Obama naïvely blamed Bush for…well, just about everything. But the fact is, Russian relations have very little to do with being nice to them or presenting toy reset buttons.