Stones Cry Out

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. 

The Left considers honest disagreement as "hate", redefining what should be a rather well-defined term.  This leads Tom Gilson at First Things to feel compelled to state that he does not hate homosexuals, despite his having signed the Manhattan Declaration.  Apparently, being associated with that stereotypes you as some sort of Westboro Church member.  Love that "tolerant" Left.

That promise from Obama that you could keep your existing plan and not be forced to change under ObamaCare(tm) has already been broken.  But now even unions realize they won’t be able to afford coverage for children, so they’re dropping it.  (But since they are unions, after all, they have to put forward a good face about this whole government takeover.)

The cost of the War on Poverty, since its inception is more than the cost of all of the actual wars in US history.  Annual spending, in 2008 and adjusted for inflation, was 13 times what it was in 1964.  Imagine if this money were to be given to private charities who waste far less of each dollar than the government does.  Imagine how much less it would cost.  It’s easy if you try.

Hmm, I feel a song coming on.

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?

A song inspired by a 4-year-old’s question, after seeing the line to see Santa.  From the website:

While at the mall a couple of years ago, my then four year old nephew, Spencer, saw kids lined up to see Santa Claus. Having been taught as a toddler that Christmas is the holiday that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, he asked his mom, "where’s the line to see Jesus"? My sister mentioned this to my dad, who immediately became inspired and jotted words down to a song in just a few minutes.

And thus began a year-long try to get someone in the music industry interested.  Failing that, Becky Kelley recorded it herself and the family created their own video for it. 

Since then, they’ve done the recording up better, with full instrumentation, and created a new video for it.

And now you can buy it in iTunes.  Wonderful song.

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.

The release of yet more secret, unredacted, government documents, including cables with unverified information, by the WikiLeaks website is yet another blow to US diplomacy and intelligence.  It will cause allies to clam up and intelligence sources to possibly lose their lives as their aid is exposed.  Thanks for nothin’.

We are learning some things, however, about the world as it really is, which, in my estimation, buttress George W. Bush’s policies in the Middle East and elsewhere.  The TPM blog (not one I typically link to, mind you) has a list of their top 5 most shocking things in the leaks.

Among them is the fact that virtually every country in the Middle East wants us to solve the Iran nuclear issue for them.  They realize that sanctions and incentives "have no importance" (via translation).  Essentially, they are absolutely useless.  I’m wondering if liberals who seem to think sanctions are the universal panacea will rethink this course of action, at least with regards to Iran.  (Hold not thy breath.)

Also, North Korea is supplying Iran with long-range missiles that could hit Europe or deep into Russia.  Yeah, all this diplomacy with madmen is working wonders for the safety of the world, don’t you think?

But one of the biggest reveals is how the New York Times is treating this, vs. other leaks.  James Delingpole, writing for the London Telegraph, highlights two quotes from the NY Times:

“The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.” Andrew Revkin, Environment Editor, New York Times Nov 20, 2009.

“The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. The New York Times and a number of publications in Europe were given access to the material several weeks ago and agreed to begin publication of articles based on the cables online on Sunday. The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.” New York Times editorial 29/11/2010

The first was an explanation of why the Time wouldn’t publish private conversations revealing ClimateGate.  The second is the explanation of why the Time did publish private conversations in the WikiLeaks documents.  For those paying attention, yet another glaring example of bias; editorial decisions made based on the policy being exposed.

(More at Stop the ACLU.)

But the original leak is utterly irresponsible.  Why is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange still roaming around a free man?  (Or for that matter, the head of the NY Times?)

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.

Yes, I was on vacation all last week, cruising in the western Caribbean.  Not so much relaxing per se (the excursions kept us moving) but recharging and just plain fun (and educational, especially with regard to the Mayan ruins we visited). 

No phone (didn’t want to pay international rates), limited Internet (just enough to transmit daily e-mails with pictures to family), and just the wife and me.  So I didn’t know about, or care about, the events of the day enough to make any real comments today.  But I just wanted to explain the dearth of posts from me. 

Nothing personal folks, but I just wasn’t thinking about you.  🙂