Stones Cry Out

Good, mid-morning.

1. Black is the new black.
2. Economics and our regrettable President.
3. Cinema.
4. Red meat and wine … instead of chips, dogs, and beer.
5. Some Kipling for ya.
6. On the Satanic verses.
7. Not micro-brewery, but micro-foundry?
8. WW-II plan meets the SA-7.
9. Why global warming became climate change.
10. A new type of vehicle.
11. Silly man … raising the percentage makes it worse (for your side). But no, I don’t find it credible that 94% of the population gets more than it gives to the feds (especially when most of the middle is paying almost 30% to them).
12. So, was that the plan?
13. Color us unsurprised.
14. When in Rome.
15. Smells bad.

Wednesday already. Imagine that.

1. Situation or tribe?
2. Missing the threat part, i.e., “because if you don’t people might get hurt.”
3. Raising kids and threats to their safety.
4. Added Vitamin D?
5. To fixie or not fixie.
6. Almost vegan wine.
7. Ironic, eh?
8. Fortunately use has more than one meaning.
9. Moving on to the substance instead of the hand-wringing phase regarding Mr Romney’s remarks.
10. Now here’s something to work with, I’m going to try write a bit on that tonight and come up with a series of my questions.
11. Probability and number theory.
12. Mr Obama continues the “its unfair when you do it” ignoring the we do it to part.
13. Of free speech and speech codes and … actions.
14. Caption this, err, these.
15. Someone forgets in 1945 we were producing a major carrier every 6 weeks and a small one once per week. How long would it take to ramp up to that or could we even approach that again?

1. Left and right reactions to 47% compared. Quite the contrast.
2. Justice and our reactions to events in the Middle East.
3. More on the same.
4. And our administration’s reaction … so … do you think this will encourage or discourage further uprisings and atrocities?
5. Sealed!
6. I’d never heard of Fabianism. Had you?
7. So … will this ruffle Amsterdam?
8. Employment and personal habits.
9. As my youngest begins learning to drive … a drivers ed of a different sort.
10. The Ryan syndrome.
11. Who is to protect? Hmm, I thought history and Magdeburg was the answer. From this book (and oddly enough I didn’t verify it’s correctness) I learned that after the tragedy at Magdeburg modern diplomacy was born … in part because the conflict was so horrible and that it was realized if only people had talked a bit, they’d have learned they weren’t actually on different sides. Yet … do we even need diplomats to be physically on site any more in the information age?
12. As life imitates … Spirited Away?
13. Banks without seat belts.
14. Plagarism.

Hat tip to Clayton Cramer, who links to a video of noted Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. If you are having qualms about voting for a Mormon because of your Christian beliefs, this is a very good (short) video from one of the greatest Christian thinkers of our day.

Also, the AP is reporting that some black pastors are telling their congregations to sit this election out.

Some black clergy see no good presidential choice between a Mormon candidate and one who supports gay marriage, so they are telling their flocks to stay home on Election Day. That’s a worrisome message for the nation’s first African-American president, who can’t afford to lose any voters from his base in a tight race.

The pastors say their congregants are asking how a true Christian could back same-sex marriage, as President Barack Obama did in May. As for Republican Mitt Romney, the first Mormon nominee from a major party, congregants are questioning the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its former ban on men of African descent in the priesthood.

I’ll say what I’ve said in previous elections. While I think a person’s value, informed by their religion, are something to consider when voting, I’m not voting for a national pastor; I’m voting for a national political leader. I think if these pastors could watch this video and get over their concern that Romney happens to be Mormon, this could really change the playing field.

Good morning.

1. A linguistic shift noted … and some exercise advice.
2. Lying or just inconsistent … at the same time calling for a more open internet and clamping down harder.
3. Yes the violence was a pretext. But no, I don’t think it was a pretext to get the West to do anything, sorry. Apologies by the White House and calls to pull You Tube (see above) videos are feckless and stupid primarily because this wasn’t about insults or disrespect for religion. This was nothing but power consolidation internally by Islamist groups, anything else is pretext. Explain the rational for treating a pretext as the primary reason? When historically was treating with the pretext as cause the better play?
4. More on that here.
5. And silly notions on international norms.
6. While we all ignore stuff like this.
7. Heh.
8. Obvious or not?
9. Waking up lucky.
10. Data glut.
11. Flexibility.
12. Hours as barter.

11 years after 9/11 we see that the problem still exists (witness the recent events in Cairo and Libya).

What we need to realize here is that on December 7, 1952 (11 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor), not only was World War II over, but Japan was our ally, and we were in the midst of the Korean War (which would not be over for another 7 months). The dynamics of the acts of aggression in those conflicts are categorically separate than what we now face. This is different – very different. As for the events of the past few days, to blame an insignificant movie as the cause demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the core issue. Furthermore, to blame an insignificant movie for the murder of 4 Americans in Libya would be like blaming Wall Street for the toppling of the Twin Towers. Oh, I forgot, some people already do.

OK, been busy. Links?

1. What does it mean to be American. The conceit that this is unique is, well, probably not unique. Recall the book I mentioned a few weeks ago … Mr Snyder’s Reconstruction of Nations? This has relevance, recall one of the puzzles is how Poland and Lithuania arrived at their national identity … recall a founding “poem which all Polish students learn in school” has in its opening stanza “Lithuania my fatherland” and … when Lithuania became a nation few people spoke Lithuanian … in the cities they spoke Polish, Yiddish, Russian and Belorussian was spoken in the country and they had similar religious divisions. Nations based on an idea is not unique as we pretend. Our notions of its uniqueness relies on our ignorance of history.
2. Credentials and skillz.
3. The reality based side of the aisle strikes again.
4. Moving right.
5. On responses to killings. I’d note that in a prior admin, Mr Bush was always slow to respond … and the later responses by the adminstration might be better. But the poster is right, we don’t as a nation “deplore any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others” in point of fact we defend the freedom of speech … with sharp pointy sticks.
6. Oooh, one for the Palin fans.
7. For the Darwinist ethics conversation. A social Darwinist it seemed to me might run with this.
8. Woo hoo.
9. Grist for the abortion debate.
10. Of logic and boxes.
11. Female protagonists and Disney.
12. Ivy league.
13. News that will be buried by the left wing press.
14. Which Jack?

Rape, incest, or the life of the mother; these are typically the three reasons under which almost everyone would say that an abortion should be permissible. Well, an international symposium on maternal healthcare in Dublin, Ireland last weekend may reduce that number.

About 140 medical professionals were at the event, including experts in obstetrics and gynaecology, mental health and molecular biology. They presented new research on issues surrounding maternal healthcare, with a focus on high-risk pregnancies, cancer in pregnancy, foetal anomalies, mental health and maternal mortality.

Prof O’Dwyer and a panel of speakers also formally agreed a “Dublin declaration” on maternal healthcare. It stated: “As experienced practitioners and researchers in obstetrics and gynaecology, we affirm that direct abortion is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman.

“We uphold that there is a fundamental difference between abortion and necessary medical treatments that are carried out to save the life of the mother, even if such treatment results in the loss of life of her unborn child.

There is that one caveat in that statement. In the course of other medical treatments required to save the mother’s life, if the baby dies, that is understandable. That could happen. And in a separate statement, the chairman of the group sponsoring the symposium stated it another way; no treatment should ever be withheld from a woman if she needed it to save her life, even if that treatment resulted in the loss of life of her unborn child.

But the symposium did say that an abortion, by itself, is never medically necessary to save her.

“Never”. That’s a pretty strong word coming from experts in their fields. But that’s what they said. And now the question is; will that have an effect on the abortion debate in this country? It ought to; this is a huge statement from people in the field who would know. But I haven’t heard it covered much in this country, which is a big reason I’m covering here, for whoever will listen.

It ought to change the debate in some way. I hope it will.

Did you hear about that business in San Antonio that lost just about all it’s market share after it’s CEO left? Seems that under his lead he developed quite the brand following and, after he left, his successor couldn’t keep the company on par with the local competition.

Oh, did I mention that the “business” was a former megachurch? From MySA,

It once was a megachurch. Now the sale of its far North Side property has wiped away longstanding debt and sparked new optimism for reversing its sizable membership decline.

…

The congregation counted an estimated 3,000 members a decade ago but today reports that about 200 attend on Sundays. The church has a lease agreement with the new owner to worship there through 2013.

“We love the building, and it’s a great location,” said David Keith, lead elder. “We just didn’t have the overall congregation to support much of that building and its mortgage.”

…

Former senior pastor Peter Spencer, who founded the congregation in 1988, could not be reached for comment. Keith said membership losses coincided with his resignation in 2003.

Spencer “had quite a following,” Keith said. “Basically, once he left, it just wasn’t quite the same.”

John Cannon, former executive pastor, succeeded Spencer in 2003 and resigned last December, eventually taking a job as a commercial real estate agent.

The church is located along a stretch of Loop 1604 informally called “church row” for the many congregations fronting it, drawing members from fast-growing suburbs. Nearly 200,000 people live within a five-mile radius of Harvest Fellowship, according to its property listing, but the competition played a role in membership losses, church leaders said.

One of these days, and I think it will be in the near future, churches in America won’t have to worry about competition from other churches.

Also see: Christians Need to Stop Making Converts

In  my most recent episode of the "Consider This!" podcast, I discussed how polygamy is beginning to get mainstreamed, with major newspapers asking the question; why is 2 some magic number for marriage? Why not "three, four, or 17"?

The website Gawker is now giving press (and rather disturbing press, frankly; the beginning of the article is not for the squeamish) to guys like Dr. Hubert Van Gijseghem (pronounced HI-sheh-hem), who is retired from the University of Montreal, and who testified before the Canadian Parliament’s "Committee on Justice and Human Rights." In part, he said:

[I]t is a fact that real pedophiles account for only 20 percent of sexual abusers. If we know that pedophiles are not simply people who commit a small offence from time to time but rather are grappling with what is equivalent to a sexual orientation just like another individual may be grappling with heterosexuality or even homosexuality, and if we agree on the fact that true pedophiles have an exclusive preference for children, which is the same as having a sexual orientation, everyone knows that there is no such thing as real therapy. You cannot change this person’s sexual orientation.

And if they’re "born this way" (to steal from a Lady Gaga song title), who are we to judge? I’m not saying that some of the things done to pedophiles is justified (the harassment they receive), because we are to love the thief, the murderer and the pedophile as Christ would love them. I completely denounce harassment, but words mean things, and this is a big step in the cultural normalization process.

At the moment, there is still some sanity on the subject. One group in Germany attempting to counsel pedophiles uses the phrase, "You are not guilty because of your sexual desire, but you are responsible for your sexual behavior. There is help." This is true of all of us. We all have our weak points of temptation, but it’s how we act (and, as Jesus pointed out, how we fantasize) that is the problem.

However, consider how homosexuality was viewed just a generation ago and how it’s been so normalized that some states allow same-sex marriage. The biggest argument that the homosexual crowd put forth was that this was something in their genes, and therefore was nothing more than being left-handed or blue-eyed. If we consider pedophilia just another sexual orientation, then, while the act may still be frowned upon for the moment, the foundation has already been laid to normalize pedophilia.

Now, I know slippery slope arguments can be…well, slippery. They involve a bit of prediction. If A happens, B will happen next. It’s easy to dismiss these sorts of arguments are mere guesses. However, when initial predictions become true, and when you have so much history to look at and see that it has been indeed happening, it’s time to take the arguments more seriously. I am very supportive of efforts to counsel pedophiles before they act on their thoughts. However, the change in terminology can and does change the culture and the views. Whether or not Dr. Van Gijseghem means it to, this change can easily be taken up by others to slip us further down the slope to … well, who knows where.

Good morning.

1. Four riders?
2. And seven strawmen.
3. Here’s the “play the race card by claiming the other guy is playing the race card” card.
4. Fear the ‘stache.
5. A book noted.
6. An election and doom if either party wins as the prediction.
7. This is not unrelated.
8. Best? Best!?
9. An academic economic result and a media bias experiment in progress.
10. Fiction and the Dems convention.
11. The sopranos and Iraq.
12. A question for the recall Walker crowd.
13. So … how do you make that argument?

Remember how Junk-DNA was supposed to be a blatant indication of the process of methodological naturalism? Remember how all that noncoding fluff in the genome was considered the result of the trial and error nature of the evolutionary process?

Yet, it seems that the junk is not so junky after-all.

In the following video by Dr. Fuz Rana, from Reasons to Believe, he tells us of the importance of the Encode DNA Project, and its findings. In the video he states that the Encode DNA team have determined that about 80% of the human genome consist of functional DNA seqences.

I recall a discussion I had years ago with a friend, who accepts the naturalistic evolutionary mindset, and his response to the apparent fact that so much of the genome was noncoding (i.e., “junk”) was, “And that makes sense from an evolutionary point of view.”

What really makes sense, when one sees the vast integrated complexity of the genome, is that one is looking at the work of a designer. A mindless process? Or the process of a mind?

Over at the Corner, Hadley Arkes has some further analysis of the Democrats’ platform fiasco from their just concluded convention and comes up with this nugget:

For it’s not a matter of one word more or less, one or more mentions of God. The real heart of the issue is that most of the people in that hall, in the Democratic convention, really don’t accept the understanding of rights contained in the Declaration of Independence: The Declaration appealed first to “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” as the very ground of our natural rights. The drafters declared that “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal,” and then immediately: that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” George Bush was not embarrassed to insist that these are “God-given rights,” as opposed to rights that we had merely given to ourselves. For if we had given them to ourselves, we could as readily take them back or remove them.

This is the real crux of the matter. Denying the existence of God (or at least failing to acknowledge His existence) makes it much easier to also deny that any of our rights are also given by God. The Democrats, at their core, don’t’ honestly believe what the Declaration of Independence says. Once you’ve disavowed the Declaration it’s not hard to disavow the Constitution as the two documents are closely linked to one another.

Tonight, the President said this:

On every issue, the choice you face won’t just be between two candidates or two parties. When all is said and done, when you pick up that ballot to vote, you will face the clearest choice of any time in a generation.

The President is exactly right. The choice that voters face is clear. Two differing worldviews are on clear display to choose from. One party believes that our rights are God-given and therefore cannot be infringed upon by government. The other believes that government has the power to grant (and to take away) rights as it pleases. Which choice would you make?

Given the events of the past 24 hours at the Democratic National Convention, this suddenly becomes a fair question. Yesterday, delegates went ballistic when party officials tried to reinsert previously omitted language about God and Israel into their platform. Needless to say this created some bad optics for the Democrats as well as creating news at their convention. This was such a grave unforced error it’s not clear yet how much damage has been done.

But taking this in conjunction with the party’s full fledged endorsement of abortion on demand (“The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.”) as well as the ongoing controversy over the HHS mandate regarding conception and suddenly you get the feeling that there is outright animus towards people of faith.

This is not necessarily new but never has it been more obvious. As John Hinderaker points outs, “The Democrats, bluntly put, have become the party of those who don’t go to church.” Although I would disagree with him over whether religious beliefs informs ones view of the issues of the day (it does) he is absolutely correct to suggest that the Democratic platform is in direct opposition to the values that Jews, Christians, and Catholics in particular hold.

This point is further illustrated in Al Mohler’s excellent essay on the stark worldview choices we are facing in this election.

All of this begs the question whether a devout Jew, Christian or Catholic can sincerely also identify themselves as a Democrat. I frankly can’t see how anyone can.

Adam Young recently released his third CD, “The Midsummer Station”, with a whirlwind tour of media appearances, including “America’s Got Talent” and the Today show. Taking on the band name “Owl City”, this one-man band has already hit it big a couple of times now. You may have heard this on the radio.

And, if you watched the movie “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole” (yes, a movie about a city of owls), you might have heard this during the end credits.

Owl City’s previous CDs have had, as their hallmark, whimsical, imaginative lyrics, much like these hits. It’s not the sum-total of his work, but it’s certainly been what he’s best known for. Also, as a Christian, while his lyrics on released material are not overtly religious, he has used words that, understanding his religion, add further meaning to them. For example, the chorus from his song “Galaxies” (another imaginative song):

Dear God, I was terribly lost,
When the galaxies crossed,
And the Sun went dark.
Dear God, You’re the only North Star,
I would follow this far.

Where, elsewhere, the “Dear God” would be simply an interjection for emphasis, here it’s a prayer.

(I say the lyrics are not overtly religious “on release material”, because he posted his rendition of “In Christ Alone” on his blog. I can’t find it there anywhere, but a YouTube video is here.)

With this as the backdrop, “The Midsummer Station” marks a few changes in the music of Owl City. First, there’s less of the one-man band aspect. His Wikipedia entry lists the current members as just “Adam Young – lead vocals, programming, keyboards, piano, synthesizers, guitars, bass guitar, drums, percussion, vibraphone”. But on Midsummer, there is collaboration on vocal, writing and producing credits. On the vocal front, the first hit off the CD, “Good Times”, pairs Young with Carly Rae “Call Me Maybe” Jepsen. Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus also appears for the track “Dementia”.

Secondly, this CD moves Owl City towards more in the way of a rock sound and slightly away from the previous very-electronic sounding, synth-pop music. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. My kids introduced me to Owl City, and I frankly loves the sound he put together on the previous CDs. So not moving too far from his roots is OK, as is his willingness to experiment with the sound and let go a little of the creative control.

Thirdly, the lyrics are less whimsical and more rooted in a concrete subject matter, even if the treatment is teenage-ish. Rather that musing about fireflies, Midsummer has two break-up songs, for example, in addition to the upbeat and uplifting songs. Adam said that the song “Dementia” was written when he was having some regrets. But not to leave it completely behind, “Metropolis” is a song that Superman might sing when he gets homesick.

There is one aspect of Owl City’s music that has not changed with this release; enunciation. Yeah, not something that you typically think of when listening to music. But hey, Mom and Dad (and I count myself as one of you), if you listen to this CD, you will not need a page of lyrics to know what’s being said. And yet, it doesn’t sound enunciated, not like a high school English teacher trying to get you to pronounce your words properly. It’s very natural and, with a combination of the sound mix and voicing, you always know the words. (Listen to one of the videos again to see what I mean.) I appreciate this, and even more so since he doesn’t try to drown out any Christian expression in the lyrics.

The song lyrics themselves might have felt at home in my high school years of the late 70s. And that may be why I like this CD; it’s a throwback to those fun days, where I can imaging blasting “Good Time” out the open windows cruising down the main drag with some buddies. It has cuts that would cause some teen being interviewed by Dick Clark on “American Bandstand” to say, “It’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it; I give it a 90.”

Some may find certain tracks a bit “cheesy”, and I can understand that. But overall, I like this CD and would definitely recommend it to, well, friends of my kids, as well as old guys like me who did like the pop music scene in the late 70s/early 80s. It’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it. I give it a 95.