Stones Cry Out

Time sure flies, doesn’t it?

1. When bad is a team effort. (fooled ya’, I’ll be you were expecting politics).
2. Our winter.
3. A healthcare prescription … more recessions. And … for good measure a cricket race.
4. Law and healthcare. 
5. Pakistan and Afghanistan.
6. SCOTUS watch.
7. Values and a (cricket race derived)  trend.
8. In praise of simplicity.
9. Must read and other reading lists for the Orthodox.
10. The sacred and the secular.
11. On Norma Rae.
12. Visiting Georgia.
13. or Nepal?
14. Speaking of Georgia … the EU makes their statement.

October 1 marks my blogiversary, or blogbirthday or whatever. For five years now, on most Sundays through Thursday nights I’ve written a short essay. On some of those I’ve failed to get anything decent on (virtual) paper and have failed to post … life also of course intervenes occasionally to make that impossible. In that summer five years ago, a co-worker mentioned he’d begun reading blogs. I’d heard of them, but didn’t really look into it. So … I looked into it. Through August and September I “delurked” and spent and more and more time joining discussions, mostly on Joe Carter’s Evangelical Outpost. Then one Friday evening in September I signed up with blogspot, and chose a name for the blog, Pseudo-Polymath. That, in itself, to be honest was something of a variant/riff on the most popular blog of the day, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, who it must be said remains one of the highest trafficked blogs (although I must admit I haven’t myself stopped by in some time now). Pseudo, meaning fake, and Polymath, a person with great expertise in a wide variety of fields, which I think describes much of us on the net for via google and wikipedia we are suddenly fake experts at so many things. A few years later, I moved from blogger/blogspot to host my own blog using WordPress where it resides now. A little over a year ago, I was invited to join a quite prestigious (in the Christian blogging community) at Stones Cry Out and so far, I haven’t been uninvited.

The very first post, not surprisingly for a programmer, was “hello world.” Which worked … I subsequently deleted. Part of the froth back then of course was the Kerry/Bush election race. I even watched some debates and “live-blogged” them. Blogging then and now in part has been part of my personal spiritual journey, a half-year prior to starting blogging I “converted” and came to the somewhat abrupt conclusion that I was not just taking my kids to church on Sunday’s for their spiritual education, but because I was now a confessing Christian. That began a flurry of book buying, reading, and study … which eventually propelled me out of that church (and for no fault of it’s own) to an Eastern Orthodox parish where I now attend and find my home.

Anyhow, so for me the blogging experience is fruitful. It spurs me to read, to study, to put thoughts into words, it’s taught me to write much much better (if you think my writing is bad now. Heh. You should have seen it back then!) It’s pushed me to read to explore things and topics I wouldn’t have considered otherwise. Who knows where it will lead me (and therefore hopefully us) in the future.

To finish, I’d like to thank wholeheartedly the small cadre of devoted commenters, and as well all who have ever commented or read. Thank your for your thoughts, your time, and your continued patience with me and with each other and for what has been almost exclusively irenic polite thoughtful discussion.

From Mike Lester (click for full-size):

1. Of the changes in Europe and in America and the fading of their socialist/statist dreams.
2. Science and politics and climate.
3. On healing and a religious tragedy.
4. Mr Obama and “excuse mongering.”
5. Whence comes this persons theory of counter-terrorism as distinct from COIN? Is he just making stuff up?
6. Chastising the phrase “original intent.”
7. Breaking down the “no religion” sector.
8. What a bigger state looks like.
9. Well, I said I wouldn’t touch the Polanski kerfuffle, but … I this makes a good point. And this question for his apologists.
10. Latvia … ahead of the US and Amtrak.
11. Now, after reading that, I want to see the film.
12. Obama. Pragmatist? Nyet.
13. Looking at healthcare and legislative strategy.
14. A lot of back tucks.
15. On degeneration of language, specifically English.

The answer is "Yes", but when it does, this is not necessarily a failure of those trying to prevent conflict.  At times, this is simply a result of the motivations of the belligerent. 

In response to my post about the delusions of negotiating with Iran, commenter Dan Trabue responded with why negotiation and pressure should be able to convince Iran not to go nuclear, and if it didn’t then it was a failing on our part.  If we go to war, it is an admission of failure on our part "that we’ve failed to outsmart this particular unreasonable leader."

I disagree.  Let’s look at some major cases.

Saddam Hussein had been negotiated with for decades.  Not even the first Gulf War was enough to keep him back.  Iraq regularly fired at coalition planes enforcing the No-Fly zone after the liberation of Kuwait (a country, by the way, that we liberated even though they had been a close ally of the Soviets and were extremely anti-Israel).  The UN and most Western governments (and in the US, both Democrats and Republicans) believed that Hussein was hiding WMDs.  He hindered UN weapons inspectors.  The threat of war from the US didn’t even move him.  This was a madman bent on both personal power and funding anti-Semitism.  There was nothing to give him that would take away those desires. 

Let’s go back a little further…

Read the rest of this entry

1. When emoticon’s converse … my guess this isn’t the conversation most people think they’re going to be having.
2. Looking back.
3. Google maps (or Earth) meets Xenophon’s travels.
4. One in six … and most of that “one” work for the city.
5. The politics of fear.
6. An interesting take on the Mr Polanski kerfuffle. One more here and that will do it on that topic for me.
7. This story got a lot of repeats as well, and if true, then that will be yet another indictment against the performance of Mr Obama.
8. Transformation of a story, Siddhartha and Christian tradition.
9. Dissecting Mr Obama’s energy tax.
10. Healthcare.
11. A homily on costs.
12. One way of looking at the question, “Who is this Jesus fellow anyhow?”
13. It’s a much bigger problem if convicted than just arraigned.
14. Not quite a giga-pixel.
15. This reminds me I still have to watch last weeks episode of Dollhouse.

Argonne has a short paper out outlining a “green” energy solution that looks more plausible than any I’ve seen for a while. If you take “carbon” seriously (I don’t but I’m in something of a minority on that) you should read this. If you don’t, however, and do take peak oil or oil independence seriously then you should still read it.

For Green Freedom the basic idea is that you take a nuclear power plant for its supply of electricity and steam. With that you use a potassium/carbon compound CO₂ + water + hydrogen via electrolysis to combine in a process that produces methanol which is then in turn further processed to a synthetic gasoline. Basically the nuclear reaction/energy drives a reaction reclaming carbon and O₂ from the air to form that gas, which is then burned in cars re-releasing that carbon back to the atmosphere in a completely carbon neutral process. It is not of course energy/lite, but that isn’t the point here.

The paper suggests some economics, but basically a price point for gasoline right about where it is now, makes installation of new plants feasible.

Of course the anti-nuclear stance of the left is a religious position, data on Gen III and Gen IV nuclear power generation will be of no interest or use in discussions.

Well, for a time I’m going to continue evening link+ remarking in the hope that it engenders further conversation.

1. Matthew Lee Anderson has a short blurb on authenticity. Authenticity seems like one of the qualities that is noetically charged, .i.e.,  that is it changes under noetic inspection. That is to say, if you wonder whether you’re authentic or not, you aren’t. If you don’t, you might be. This makes being leading a authentic self-examined life something of a difficult prospect. You can of course lead an authentic self-examined life … so long as the aspect you are examining about your self and your outlook is not whether or not you are being authentic. Back in the day, when attending college in through the 80s and I deem the decade before as well, it was vogue to “drop out” of school for a time to find yourself. My impression that this motive was rarely, uhm, authentic. In last nights’ links+r post, I noted a Joe Carter post reflecting on those quite ordinary moments. There is some similarity here. Graduations, gaudy events, and moments filled with fire are not as authentic nor as lasting as the quite stolid ordinary times in our lives. Consider the exchange in the movie Up!, counting cars for “reds” and “blues” wouldn’t be an authentic ordinary memory to treasure if you’re doing it to be authentic.
2. Science used to be a field which, when theory disagreed with experiment, discarded the theory and not bolstered it with, well, pseudo-science or at best merely irrelevant science. Time and time again we find, in the Philippines, in WWII resistance movements faced with a enemy which utilizes torture finds that, on capture of one of their own, must immediately abandon all safe houses and locations known to that captured individual. Everyone who was in contact with the captured person facing and undergoing torture is now at a high risk for interdiction. Yet here it is argued that torture is best for producing “false memories.”
   

   The problem here is that “The problem, he says, is that stress hormones actually make it less likely that someone subject to abuse can accurately recall information, so that such abuse ends up “destroying the very memories they’re supposed to recover.””

   Uhm questions like “Where do you live?” Who are your contacts? And such aren’t “hard things” to remember. They are your mission. Your life. The center of your activity as a resistance member. Forgetting them is not likely or the problem. This is very much not like the manufactured memories of real or imagined pre-adolescent mythical abuse. These are more like, “Where do you work?” Stress might “make it less likely” that you can accurately recall information. But, I’d bet even with stress most people could get that right. [Disclaimer: Yet again, before the “you promote torture” worms come out of the woodwork. I do not promote torture. I think the honest appraisal is that can be effective, but we will choose nevertheless not to use it.]

3. Post cold war … some reflections. While I think this short article is important all I can think of right now is that improving and cementing commercial ties between nations ultimately will lead to closer ties and connections. And in that regard, what America needs most is Teremok (or more accurately ???????). When we were in Russia last year, we loved eating there … and everone knows America and the West need most is yet another fast food franchise. Blini filled with smoked salmon and sour cream (or one of dozens of other choices) washed down with kvas. Yum.

In the wake of last night’s posts, it was noted that they moved from more to less philosophical. That seems to be a trend.

Russia, America, torture, noetic

Leave it to Mike Huckabee to nail the issue in the video below. In light of last week’s circus in New York it’s time to dump the UN.

From Eliot Cohen:

Unless you are a connoisseur of small pictures of bearded, brooding fanatical clerics there is not much reason to collect Iranian currency. But I kept one bill on my desk at the State Department because of its watermark—an atom superimposed on the part of that country that harbors the Natanz nuclear site. Only the terminally innocent should have been surprised to learn that there is at least one other covert site, whose only purpose could be the production of highly enriched uranium for atom bombs.

Pressure, be it gentle or severe, will not erase that nuclear program. The choices are now what they ever were: an American or an Israeli strike, which would probably cause a substantial war, or living in a world with Iranian nuclear weapons, which may also result in war, perhaps nuclear, over a longer period of time.

Understandably, the U.S. government has hoped for a middle course of sanctions, negotiations and bargaining that would remove the problem without the ugly consequences. This is self-delusion. Yes, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy stood side by side with President Barack Obama in Pittsburgh and talked sternly about lines in the sand; and yes, Russian President Dimitry Medvedev hinted that some kind of sanctions might, conceivably, be needed. They said the same things to, and with, President George W. Bush.

That’s right, the much-maligned diplomat George W. Bush was part of a diplomatic effort, continued by Barack "Change" Obama, to get Iran to abandon the nuclear weapons program that they’ve denied but that the world knows they’re gearing up.  The talk and the Sternly Worded Letters(tm) from the United Nations have bought Iran the time they needed and brought us to the brink of either war on Iran or war from Iran. 

Rock, meet hard place. 

Cohen goes on to say that, at this point, it’s really too late and too difficult to remove the threat via a tactical strike, as Israel did in 1981, and an all-out war with Iran is a difficult proposition, because of the consequences to oil production, a potentially expanded war in the region, and because the Obama administration can’t even sell Afghanistan as "the good war" anymore. 

His suggestion is the kind of "meddling" that Democrats have shown distaste for in the past but which we’re left with after all the talking has proved fruitless; overthrowing the regime through something other than overt war.  The alternative is living with a nuclear Iran, and if you think they’re bothersome now, what with financing terrorism in the region, just wait until they have a  missile with a nuke on top and no one dare cross them.

At least we won’t have a nuclear Iraq with a regime also bent on terrorism.  You can thank Dubya for that, and reserve your thanks from the UN.  Over a decade of what passes for diplomacy and negotiation got us precisely nowhere.  History is repeating itself.

1. It is noted that Mr Obama was not so loquacious at the economic summit. Also from the same author/source, the Joe Wilson problem … he was, you now, lying.
2. Surprise! Gambling in the casino, the gendarmes is oh so surprised. How about Mr Obama? More here. And here.
3. A3 TDI gets 78mpg. Will it be sold in the US? I doubt it. After all, we have ca$h for clunkers.
4. Mr bin Laden’s bet.
5. Poland invades.
6. Brandon has his links at Siris. But y’all already knew that.
7. A right to healthcare. A right to food. Pretty soon, there’ll be a right to television.
8. I wonder how prostrations would fly?
9. First the nanny state and the nanny marketplace. Next, the nanny battlefield?
10. On 13 days.
11. Sherman and Xenophon.
12. Mr Polanski, so far I have yet any defenders of his.
13. Math and utility, harking back to Mr Wigner’s paper on the unreasonbleness of the nature between math and the world.
14. Kremlin spin.

fuel efficiency, Iran, Afghanistan, healthcare, history

Scott Ott nails it, as usual.

Following President Obama’s visionary speech to the United Nations Tuesday, the U.N. Security Council today passed a resolution altering human nature to comport with "Obama’s hope-saturated view of our global future."

The measure comes a day after the council adopted a resolution aimed at "ridding the world of nuclear armaments, and replacing such weapons of mass destruction with fuzzy bunnies, warm chocolate and purple petunias."

The Obama administration worked diligently through the night to secure the support of Russia and China for the series of resolutions — a task complicated by the fact that the two superpowers are major exporters of nuclear-enrichment gear to totalitarian states, but lack a strong presence in the bunny, chocolate and petunia industries.

Human nature, a perennial obstacle in the implementation of U.N. resolutions, faced inevitable obsolescence in the face of Obama’s nuclear disarmament measures, which rely on ill-willed megalomaniacs to put the good of the global community ahead of their own ceaseless thirst for power.

The new U.N.-approved human nature will cause world leaders to set aside their self-interest in order to pursue goals that ultimately reduce their personal influence and subjugate them to the collective will of "the people of the world."

Hilarious and pointed, but this paragraph is the kicker.

"Without this change," said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "the U.N. would be consigned to more decades of hollow words backed by empty promises and futile actions. But thanks to the new human nature, the president has finally fulfilled the promise of the U.N. Charter. Why it took so long for the global community to deal with this obvious challenge, no one knows. But now, tomorrow is a brand new day."

Essentially, this is what Saddam Hussein knew all along; nothing

My morning link posts usually arrive with virtually no editorial comment on my part, the sentence or so I give is mostly intended to interest the viewer to follow the link to the post indicated. I’ve got a short time this evening, and I’m caught up on my link browsing, so I thought I’d try to offer a smaller number of links here with a short paragraph surrounding it.

There’s been some discussion on and off about setting barriers. In general democrats think that bringing more to the table, irrespective of their seriousness or issues awareness is not relevant. What they feel is that more is always better. Yet, experience should, one might think, tell a different tale. Setting higher standards, yes it gets you less people making the decisions or performing the act, but it often raises the level of the result. Speaking of results that are not so impressive.

The friendly neighborhood Rust Belt Philosopher has a short post on fallacies. He starts off writing:

One of the nice things about fallacies is how they usually have equally fallacious mirror images. The ad populum fallacy, for instance, could be reversed into the invalid argument that a view is accurate because nobody (or very few people) believe it.

Recently I’ve come to find that ad populum point of view in historical reviews, i.e., the popular conception of what happened is wrong more than it is right. The popular view of what happened and why … is wrong. Not just a little wrong often, but exactly wrong. For example, virtually nobody believes that the BEF was innovative and responsive to situations in the field during WWI. Actually the common popular view was that the leadership was amazingly unresponsive, stupid and tradition/hidebound sending millions to their deaths in trenches because of their stupidity. This is alas, exactly wrong, but the popular view remains. The litany of “exactly wrong” historical popular views might be almost as long as the ones that the popular view gets right.

Joe Carter at First Thoughts has some ideas about monotony. The movie Up! offered the same theme, in part, in modern cinematic experience, highlighting the primacy of the ordinary in life. Ordinary moments with our spouse, children, neighbor, or for that matter God are really in the end more important than the ones we find to be pivotal. In a recent post of mine, arguments in favor of asceticism were made. In part, asceticism is about realizing those quiet moments with God are important and making that goal a formative in how you set your life and its goals.

This post will have evoke the standard responses from right and left. Up three paragraphs Mr Niven remarks in his post on the fallacy that correlation does not imply causation. That, in part, will be a crucial link in the argument by the left in this regard. Automation is part of the modern world. As a minimum wage goes up, the cost of replacing that unskilled worker with automation goes up. As the minimum wage goes up, it becomes harder to justify paying for the production of that same unskilled worker. It makes entry harder. Why does the left pretend this isn’t true?

democracy, fallacy, logic, Good, God, unemployment

Well, some time ago, I offered that in discussions with American protestants about celibacy, monasticism, and asceticism might be best approached if they first start Scripture. It is my contention that the early fathers also started with Scripture (and some of the earlier ones of course also had face to face conversations with Apostles which we lack). The point of view I’m trying to confront here is that married life “in the world” is normative and that Jesus via the gospels, Paul and the other New Testament writers, Peter, James, etc, teach present this as the highest or first calling for the Christian life. I’m going to confront this,  not by the writings of the Fathers, or by reference to the fact that not seeing asceticism as normative is a very modern (Protestant) idea but instead I’ll attempt to refer just to Scripture. So, for now … I’ll give that a shot and to start, I’ll just look at the life of Jesus and the Gospels.

Now in the Gospels, there are a number of narrative threads running through the start to the climax of Jesus’ life. One of the primary ones is a anti-temple narrative. However, there is also one supporting the ascetic life. So here are some essential narrative and/or elements to Jesus life and example that support asceticism.

1. After being Baptised by John at the Jordan what does Jesus do? He goes into the desert, into a time of solitude for 40 days … facing down the devil and temptations.
2. When the rich man who was fulfilling all the commandments asked what more he might do, the reply “sell all you have and follow me” was given.
3. In Matthew 18 and 19 Jesus repeatedly offers that those who do not become as children will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
4. When the disciples had been sent out, they failed to confront and cast out some demons. Jesus remarked, “this sort of demon can only be cast out through prayer and fasting.”
5. Mary and Martha receive Jesus. Mary sits at Jesus feet and ignores home and hospitality. Martha is put out, but Jesus replies, “Mary has chosen the good portion.”

Demons for the early church in a large part meant those forces and temptations to sin. This is something all of us face. How then are we taught to confront sin? Jesus’ first response is fasting, prayer. What did he do? Fast and pray and retreat to the desert, to solitude. When a wealthy man is asked what to do, sell all you have and follow me (where? to a life of fasting and prayer?). John himself was an Essene. A desert ascetic feeding on locusts and honey teaching a life of repentance. That this man would be the one to validate and announce Jesus ministry, does this not validate and highlight John’s lifestyle to a degree. Finally, with Mary and Martha the two sisters might be seen as representing the life of the world vs and the life of prayer. Jesus does not rebuke Martha for her choice but he also says that Mary’s choice “is the good portion.” Finally, what is like a child? Humility and not being concerned with the cares of the world … might be the answer. How might an adult do this?

For the early church (and for that matter the church as a whole until the Protestant movement came about) found asceticism to be one of the primary messages from Scripture.

asceticism, Christianity, Christian life, demon

Most of the coverage from last week’s meetings at the United Nations focused on leaders of rogue nations. But the most important speech was one given by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s a tough speech and one worth watching. It’s also a speech that historians may look back upon years from now as very prophetic. Take time to watch it all.