Evan Brown

Posting Using GoogleCL

2010-06-18T22:01:00.001-05:00

Google released a command-line tool today called GoogleCL which can be used to interact with several of the company's web applications. I am using it right now to post this message.

Watching the DNC or Going to Bed: Not a Difficult Choice

2008-08-28T08:26:00.001-05:00

I have wanted to watch more of the Democratic National Convention than I actually have these past three nights, but the speeches keep driving me away. The speakers continually spout the same old political rhetoric which I have heard a hundred times, so I end up going to bed instead of listening once again to how those awful Republicans have ruined the country and how a McCain Presidency would be a third Bush term.

There have been a couple of nice speech moments when someone like Michelle Obama or Joe Biden has talked about family or working hard to achieve success, but those instances have been so fleeting that they have not kept my attention.

Here is the main problem with most of the DNC speeches: each night, the speakers have the opportunity to capture the attention of someone like me, who does not normally vote Democratic but is willing to hear them out on issues which matter. But each night, the Democrats instead offer generalities and trite expressions which do nothing but appeal to the party’s base, people who are going to vote for the Democratic Party in November anyway.

They could lay out specifics of what their party plans to do to improve the country in the next four years. They could extend an invitation to moderates and conservatives to join them and and help them be a party where opposing viewpoints are encouraged and where honest debate is welcome. They could express a desire to work with the Republican Party to solve the problems this country is facing and a willingness to compromise on issues which are not core values.

But they don’t. So every night after I have had my fill (which doesn’t take long) of the lofty yet vacuous oratory, I head to bed. Because a good night’s sleep is worth more to me than all the “hope” and “change” that the Democratic Party presents.

Obama and McCain at the Saddleback Civil Forum

2008-08-19T17:34:00.002-05:00

On Saturday night, Rick Warren, the popular evangelical minister who authored the best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life, hosted the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency at his church in Lake Forest, California. John McCain and Barack Obama were both there, which is notable because this is the first time that both Presidential candidates have appeared together during the campaign season.

I watched the coverage of the two-hour event, and I was really impressed with how it was conducted. One hour was devoted to each candidate; Pastor Warren interviewed Obama during the first hour and McCain during the second. The only time that the two senators appeared onstage simultaneously was at the half-way point of the forum as Obama was leaving and McCain was entering.

The atmosphere of the event was very casual; Rick Warren and the candidate whom he was questioning at the time were both seated, and no time limits where imposed except for a one-minute answer at the end. I liked the relaxed environment of the forum; I think it allowed senators Obama and McCain to be a bit more genuine with their responses, not merely reciting points from their campaign speeches. The official debates ought to be structured much like this, with the exception of having both candidates on stage at the same time.

For the most part, Pastor Warren asked the same questions to both men. On average, Obama tended to be more verbose with his answers than McCain, so Warren was able to pose an additional question or two to McCain during his hour. Because both candidates were questioned separately about the same topics and neither heard the other speak (more on the “cone of silence” controversy later), this forum made for an excellent opportunity to analyze their responses and see where Obama and McCain agree and where they obviously differ.

Below, I have paraphrased the questions that Rick Warren posed to the two Presidential candidates (because of the conversational style of the interviews, the wording used by Warren for the questions was not necessarily identical for each candidate), and I will give a brief summary of each man’s replies — and maybe offer a few thoughts of my own. The full transcript of the event is available here.

Who are the three wisest people you know in your life? Who are you going to rely on heavily in your administration?

Barack Obama and John McCain gave starkly different responses to this question, and I believe that is primarily the result of Pastor Warren wording it differently for each candidate. For Obama, the two parts of the question were separated by an “and”, so the implication was that the wisest people he knows might not necessarily be advising an Obama administration. As much as I would like to make fun of Obama for naming his wife and his grandmother as people who would influence his Presidency, in his case, the response was appropriate (and the senator did have some very sweet things to say about the women in his life). Regarding his Presidency, Obama threw out several names, a mixture of Democrats and Republicans — Sam Nunn, Dick Lugar, Ted Kennedy, Tom Coburn — I presume to show how bi-partisan he is (or is it post-partisan?), although I seriously doubt he would he take any policy advice from Senator Coburn.

John McCain, who — as I said — received a slightly re-worded question, listed three people whom he would rely upon if he became President. His picks were quite fascinating: General David Petraeus, Congressman John Lewis, and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. I might want to analyze McCain’s choices in detail — especially considering that there might be a Vice-Presidential pick in there — if not for the fact that this is only the first question of the forum, and we have many more to go through.

What has be the greatest moral failure in your life? And what do you think is the greatest moral failure of America?

Obama spoke about his youth, specifically about his problems with drugs and alcohol, which he has talked about before. McCain surprised me with his answer to the first question by simply stating that the breakdown of his first marriage was his greatest moral failure. He said it with such sincerity that it made me a little sad.

Regarding America’s greatest moral failure, Obama’s and McCain’s responses were actually very similar as they both talked about how Americans should do more to put the needs of others ahead of their own needs.

Can you give me a good example where you went against party loyalty, and maybe even against your own best interests, for the good of America?

Obama actually talked about working with John McCain on campaign finance reform, an issue which does not endear me to either one of them. Unsurprisingly, McCain had a laundry list of topics: climate change, torture, and wasteful government spending. He spent the most time talking about his opposition to sending Marines into Beirut, Lebanon in the 1980s.

What is the most significant position that you held ten years ago that you know longer hold today.

For Obama, the position change which he mentioned was something to do with welfare reform. I don’t fully understand what his flip-flop was, nor do I really care, but there it is. McCain used the question to jump into a stump speech about offshore drilling, which he opposed not too long ago. “We’ve got to drill now and got to drill here,” the senator said. “And I know that there’s some here in California that disagree with that position,” he continued, pronouncing California like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger does, which I thought was kind of a cheap shot. McCain moved on from there to talk about other kinds of energy, including nuclear power.

What is the most gut-wrenching decision you ever had to make? And what was the process that you used to make it?

Senator Obama talked about his opposition to the war in Iraq. Honestly, I appreciate that Obama wrestled with the decision and that he acknowledges that Saddam Hussein was a horrible man. I believe that Obama’s position on the war is wrong, but at least his opposition (according to him) was not a knee-jerk reaction.

McCain told the story from when he was a POW in Vietnam about the North Vietnamese telling him that he could go home and his refusal to leave. I have heard the senator give his account of the event several times now, but it still manages to choke me up a bit each time I hear it.

What does it mean to you to trust in Christ? How does faith work out in your life on a daily basis?

I think that Obama gave the best response to this question: “I believe … that Jesus Christ died for my sins, and that I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis.” He also paraphrased Micah 6:8, which is a favorite of mine.

But Obama said something which I found a little curious. Referring to his faith, the senator said (emphasis mine), “it means that those sins that I have on a fairly regular basis hopefully will be washed away.” Hopefully? Isn’t he sure as a Christian that Jesus has paid the full price for all his transgressions? I can’t examine the words of someone speaking off-the-cuff too closely, but his slight uncertainty struck me as peculiar.

McCain said that being a follower of Christ means he is “saved and forgiven.” He then told another story about Vietnam, this time about sharing a moment of worship with one of his captors on Christmas Day. I heard the tale last year when McCain ran it as part of an advertisement during the primary season, so like the previous story, it wasn’t new to me, but unlike his previous one, I wasn’t too moved by it. I wish McCain had spent a little more time explaining his faith rather than telling anecdotes from his past.

At what point does a baby entitled to human rights, in your view?

This was the big question to me. Abortion is a complex issue, no doubt, but like so many problems facing the country, it has an easy solution. I was eager to hear what kinds of responses the two candidates would give.

Obama’s response was… well — how should I say it? — lacking. He started off, “Well, you know, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”

Although I could easily write a lengthy blog post on that statement alone, I am going to leave it without further comment except to say that I’m certain Republicans will be using it in ads in the near future.

The senator then meandered verbally for a while, talking about the tough decisions women have to make and how we should strive to reduce the number of abortions. He admitted that he is pro-choice, but other than that, he did not really say anything of substance.

Rick Warren asked a follow-up question: “Have you ever voted to limit or reduce abortions?” Obama then proceeded to ramble on for a little while longer about supporting limits on late-term abortions (something his voting record doesn’t show) and how he respects the views of those who are pro-life and how both sides should work to reduce unwanted pregnancies and how women should be given proper health care, support services, et cetera.

I feel that Pastor Warren was unsatisfied with the whole response as well when he said, “There’s a lot more I’d like to ask on that.” But pressed for time, he move on.

John McCain, on the other hand, gave an excellent answer to the question. I have to admit that I was surprised because I did not think he would be so straightforward considering I rarely hear him discuss social issues. In fact, while I was listening to Obama’s rambling reply the hour before, I said to my wife, “McCain better not drop the ball on this one.” And he didn’t.

“At the moment of conception,” he stated matter-of-factly about when a child should have rights. “I have a twenty-five-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate. And as president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president. And this presidency will have pro-life policies. That’s my commitment. That’s my commitment to you.”

And that is all I needed to hear. Thank you, Senator McCain.

Define marriage.

Obama and McCain both concur that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. Obama also added that he supports civil unions.

Neither candidate supports the idea of an amendment to the United States Constitution in order to preserve that definition of marriage. Obama basically said the Constitution is not the place for it (a point on which I agree). John McCain proclaimed that he is a federalist and thinks states should be free to make the decision of what marriage is. McCain did say that he would support a marriage amendment if a federal judge ever ruled that his state of Arizona had to observe the same definition as Massachusetts.

Given the scientific break-through of pluripotent adult stem cells, would you favor or oppose the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research?

Here is a subject on which I believe both men are dead wrong.

Barack Obama said he favors using nonimplanted embryos from fertility clinics where attempts at in vitro fertilization have occurred. Obama’s reasoning is that if the embryos are going to be discarded anyway, it is better to use them for research. While this argument may sound rational on the surface, the truth is these embryos should never be considered waste to begin with. Protecting embryos within fertility clinics is an area where the pro-life movement has faltered, and that is really a disgrace because it has allowed the door to open wider for misguided research on human life.

John McCain said that he has also “come down on the side of stem cell research,” and I assume he means embryonic stem cell research. McCain’s response troubles me more than Obama’s because at least Obama was being consistent with his pro-abortion views. But McCain said a couple of questions prior that his administration “will have pro-life policies.” Favoring deadly research on human embryos is certainly not a pro-life position.

To their credit, both candidates said they are hopeful about adult stem cell research, which has no moral opposition.

Does evil exist? And if so, do we ignore it? Do we negotiate with it? Do we contain it? Do we defeat it?

This was a good question and really showed a clear contrast in how the two Presidential hopefuls think.

Obama affirmed that evil does exist and mentioned genocide in Darfur and child abuse as examples. But the senator also talked a lot about having humility, which I found interesting. Obama said that a lot of evil things have been done in the name of good and that having good intentions does not necessarily mean that good will be done — both of which are true — but the point that he was trying to make seemed to be that people shouldn’t be quick to declare things around them as evil. I thought this was a rather weak position for him to hold, especially as a Christian.

McCain, on the other hand, came out swinging with his two-word answer: “Defeat it.” He then railed against Islamic extremism, particularly al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, saying that he would “follow him to the gates of hell” and “bring him to justice.” The vast difference between McCain’s forceful response and Obama’s mild one was startling, and it raised questions in my mind about how a President Obama would react to terrorism.

Which existing Supreme Court Justices would you not have nominated?

Senator Obama did not think Clarence Thomas was a good pick, because — according to Obama — he was not a “strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time.” That is a curious statement to make because if Justice Thomas did not have enough judicial experience to be qualified for the position, what does that say about Obama and his lack of any executive experience? Obama also included Antonin Scalia because he and Obama “just disagree.”

Pastor Warren asked about John Roberts, and Obama expressed concerns that Chief Justice Roberts was allowing the executive branch to have more power than the Constitution gave it.

In contrast, Senator McCain listed every liberal member of the Supreme Court: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter, and John Paul Stevens. When Warren asked why he chose all of those Justices, McCain said because they have legislated from the bench.

Although not asked about them, McCain also mentioned John Roberts and Samuel Alito as being two of his favorites. Anthony Kennedy, typically considered the “swing vote” on the Court, was the only Justice who received no mention by either candidate.

According to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, faith-based organizations have a right to hire people who believe like they do. Would you insist that faith-based organizations forfeit that right to access federal funds?

Obama generally thinks that faith-based institutions should be allowed to hire whomever they want, but not necessarily when “offering services to the public.” I thought he was being very careful with his words and deliberately vague. He said that “the devil’s in the details,” and talked a lot about discrimination and “a level playing field.” In my opinion, Obama did not want to come out and reveal in front of a evangelical crowd that he believes that Christian groups receiving federal funds should not be permitted to tell share their faith when helping people outside their walls.

McCain was once again straightforward in his answer. “Absolutely not,” he said, regarding whether religious organizations should lose access to federal money if they only hire like-minded people. McCain explained that if these groups could no longer hire people with common beliefs, “it would mean a severe crippling of faith-based organizations and their ability to do things so successfully.” He then proceeded to tell yet another anecdote, this time about Katrina relief.

Do you think better teachers should be paid better?

This time, I am going to begin with McCain’s response. “Yes,” declared the Arizona senator. “And find bad teachers another line of work.”

Obama’s answer wasn’t nearly that simple, but he did agree that excellence should be rewarded.

Define rich.

I thought this was a great question simply because Democrats constantly decry tax cuts for the rich but never really state precisely who rich people are.

Obama was rather coy with his response to Rick Warren. Referring to the impressive sales of Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, he said, “if you’ve got book sales of $25 million, then you qualify.” He then talked about how rich is a relative term but that people making $250,000 are doing pretty well. Obama went on to explain that the government has to pay for things and that costs money, and we should not leave behind “a mountain of debt” for the next generation to deal with. I agree with the point about debt, but Obama’s whole premise is based upon having to fund a massive federal government. I say let’s have a much smaller, limited government, then we wouldn’t need to pay so much in taxes.

McCain stated that some of the wealthiest people he had ever known were also some of the unhappiest. He said that rich should not be define by how much money one has but by other factors such as a having a home, an education, and a good job. He then claimed, “I don’t want to take any money from the rich — I want everybody to get rich.” Jokingly, he eventually settled on a income in excess of five million dollars as being rich.

As an American, what is worth dying for? And what is worth committing American lives for?

This is an excellent question, and one I am sure that many Americans have pondered.

Obama said American freedom “obviously” and “America’s national interests,” then talked a little about forging alliances with other countries.

McCain said freedom (but did not qualify it with American as Obama did) and national security. He also made it clear that we should fight tyranny, but “we can’t right every wrong.” American blood is “the most precious asset we have,” and much has been spilled defending the freedoms of other countries. Whenever possible, we should try to win “without firing a shot” like in the Cold War.

Both were decent responses, but I liked McCain’s more.

What would be the criteria for which you would commit troops to, for instance, end the genocide in Darfur or what is happening in Georgia?

Once again, Obama did some waffling, saying there is no “hard and fast line.” He then spoke yet again about working with the international community to stop conflicts. In case you haven’t gotten the message, Barack Obama really likes working with other countries to solve problems.

McCain said he would commit troops if the nation’s security was threatened. Regarding conflicts in other countries like Darfur which do not directly affect the United States, McCain suggested we should do more by supplying equipment and logistics but mostly let the countries themselves manage the situation.

Rick Warren then asked him a follow-up question which Obama did not get, “Now… you are seeing Russia reassert itself in Georgia and maybe now Poland. What’s happening?” McCain talked a little about the killings and village burnings that have happened in Georgia. He spoke of Georgia being one of the earliest Christian nations and what a wonderful country it is and what a good man Mikheil Saak’ashvili, the President of Georgia, is. McCain said we should get humanitarian aid to the people there as quickly as we can, but he also made it clear that Russia’s actions in that country are “not acceptable in the twenty-first century.”

Would you be willing to consider and even commit to doing some kind of emergency plan for orphans, like President Bush did with AIDS, to deal with this issue?

Obama thinks having a plan for orphans is a great idea and wants to work with national institutions to make it happen. He also said that we should figure out how to prevent more children from becoming orphans, but he gave no specifics on how to do that.

McCain said that adoption should be made much easier in this country (I wholeheartedly agree). He then predictably told the tale of how his wife Cindy brought their soon-to-be-adopted daughter Bridget to their home from an orphanage run by Mother Teresa (a good story, but I have heard it a few times).

What do you think the U.S. should do to end religious persecution in other places, like China or Iraq, whether it is Christian or any other faith?

Obama said Americans should speak out and not pretend like persecution isn’t happening. Unsurprisingly, he also think we should work with international partners to point out where persecution is taking place. He then brought the issue home and discussed leading by example and making sure we practice religious tolerance in the United States. Obama mentioned that we should follow the rule of law and threw in a denunciation of torture for good measure.

McCain said that the President’s best weapon in this cause is the “bully pulpit.”

There are about 27 million people living in slavery right now. How do we speak out and what do you plan to do about that?

Obama declared that this must be a top priority; prosecutors must be given “more effective tools” in order to crack down on human trafficking networks. And once again, we should also make alliances with international partners to make this happen.

Looking over the transcript, it appears that McCain was not asked about the slavery issue, so he may have gotten off on this one.

In one minute, tell me why you want to be president.

This was the only question with a time limit, but despite that, Obama spent half the time talking about his mother. He then said that he felt the American dream was “slipping away.” Washington is broken, big decisions need to be made, and Obama thinks he is the one the make them. He also said that he has the ability to “build bridges” between different groups and get people to work together.

John McCain wants “to inspire a generation of Americans to serve a cause greater than their self-interest.” He talked about the challenges the country faces, but how its best days lie ahead. He briefly mentioned his time in the military and in Congress and how he has always put his country first. In fact, he actually said the exact phrase “country first” five times in three paragraphs. McCain also said that he can reach across the aisle to the other party, which I think is a lot like the bridge-building Obama wants to do.

What would you say to people who are opposed to me asking you these questions in a church?

This was the final question that was asked of both men, and I thought it was appropriate given the current hostility by some groups toward any mixing of faith and politics.

Obama said that we need to have conversations in forums like Saddleback, and they allow the American people to make informed decisions. McCain said that he wants “to be in every venue in America” and correctly noted that this nation was founded on Judeo-Christian values.

When our right to privacy and our right to national security collide, how do you decide what takes precedent?

This was a question that only McCain was asked. It is a good one, and I wish that Obama had gotten the chance to respond to it.

McCain said that privacy and security are “competing priorities” and that privacy is a fundamental right which every person has. But the technological advances of the past few decades mean that laws need to be updated so that the communications of enemies can be monitored. McCain basically said that members of Congress need to stop fighting and work together to protect the country.

What would you tell the American public if you knew there wouldn’t be any repercussions?

Obama was the only one to be asked this particular question. His response was that big problems cannot be solved easily, and everyone needs to take part in the solutions. He specifically mentioned energy and said there is a price to pay in order to transition the current economy into a more energy-efficient one. According to Obama, the changes will not be free; it will require sacrifice from all Americans.

On the surface, this was a nice sentiment. But for some reason, I have a sneaking suspicion that Senator Obama expects the wealthiest Americans to pay more than their fair share of this “sacrifice”.

Was the cone of silence you were just in comfortable?

After Senator Obama’s hour was up, Senator McCain came out, and Pastor Warren jokingly asked McCain about the “cone of silence.” This was because McCain was apparently put in a location during the first hour of the forum where he would be unable to hear the questions and Obama’s answers and therefore, not have an unfair advantage.

After the forum was over, the general consensus among most viewers was that McCain performed better overall than Obama. I agree with that assessment; McCain came across as being quite confident in his responses while Obama often faltered — sometimes on very critical issues. Unable to accept that John McCain could do so well, bloggers on the left immediately began claiming that McCain must have heard some of the questions in advance because he often responded very quickly.

I think this is simply ludicrous. McCain’s speedy responses can probably be attributed to the fact that the man knows for certain what he believes. For instance, any pro-life person ought to be able to answer immediately when asked when life begins — it begins at conception. Similarly, anyone who recognizes the existence of evil and the threat it is to the world should not need to hesitate before proclaiming that it must be defeated. For these liberals to imply that McCain cheated merely because he was quick on the draw is shameful.

Unfortunately, it did not end there. Andrea Mitchell repeated the claim the next morning on Meet the Press, which only gave the charge validity. Then the McCain campaign admitted that they were a little late getting the senator to Saddleback Church for the forum and that the event had already begun when they arrived. McCain’s people tried to assure the doubters that he had not heard any of Obama’s interview, but people will believe whatever they choose to. So there are still some liberals out there who say that McCain cheated even though there is not a shred of evidence to prove it.

The cheating charge is completely meaningless, but I wanted to mention it since it did cause a minor controversy earlier this week.

All in all, I think that both candidates performed fairly well at the Saddleback Civil Forum, but it was John McCain who stole the show by doing far better than was expected by most people (myself included).

I am so glad that Rick Warren hosted the forum, and that both parties’ presumptive nominees were in attendance. It provided a unique opportunity to get into the minds of these two American leaders, one of whom will certainly be the next President of the United States.

Blogger’s Improved Flag Button

2008-08-15T11:23:00.001-05:00

Three years ago, I wrote a couple of relatively popular posts about Blogger’s then-new “feature” which allowed anybody to mark any blog as being offensive. The “Flag As Objectionable” button caused a bit of a controversy at the time among Blogger users, many of whom viewed it as a form of censorship. I criticized Google’s Blogger team not for the button’s existence but because they provided no guidance on when to use it and what happened when the button was clicked.

Here is some of what I said.

Why can’t the [Flag button] “be manipulated by angry mobs” [a quote from the Blogger help page]? What safeguards are in place to prevent it? Is every flagged site checked by a member of the Blogger team to verify that it is indeed worthy of being delisted? If thousands of sites receive multiple flags, it would be a time-consuming job to check each one. Does a computer aid in the process? If so, what are its procedures for determining which sites to delist? How does someone who has had his site delisted go about having his site listed again? If he removes the offensive content, will Blogger consider removing the ban, or is the decision absolute? Is there any way for users to view a list of delisted sites in order to see examples of objectionable content? Blogger has not provided answers for any of these questions.
[…]
I do not think that Blogger’s “Flag?” button is inherently a bad idea, but I do wish that the people in charge would give us more information about how to properly use the feature. That way, there would be some guidelines in place on appropriate utilization, and that may prevent some potential abuse.

I also wondered how visitors to blogs hosted on Blogger should regard the button.

[The ambiguity of the button] raises some interesting questions. If I come across a post on a site that says something I do not like (whether politically incorrect or downright vulgar), should I flag that weblog even if that person has a legal right to say it? Should my own standard of decency determine whether or not other people on Blogger should be allowed to find the site?

Despite the initial outcry, within a couple of months, most people had forgotten about the Flag button, and it has made little news since then. One notable exception was a couple of months ago when supporters of Presidential candidate Barack Obama allegedly made an organized effort to flag anti-Obama blogs as being spam. All the blogs have since been restored, but it goes to show that my concerns of three years ago were quite valid.

Perhaps in response to the Obama incident, Google has now changed the way that the Flag button operates. The news was posted yesterday on Blogger Buzz, the service’s official blog.

The Flag Blog button in the Blogger navbar now pops up a window for you to tell us why you think the blog violates our terms of service. Flag Blog is always handled exclusively by human reviewers, not the automated spam locking system, so this information will better help them decide what, if any, action should be taken.

Finally, Google is realizing that the original implementation of the Flag button was flawed. Now, instead of being able to merely click a single button to mark a site as objectionable, someone wanting to report a blog for TOS violations must give a specific reason (via a radio button list) as to why the blog deserves to be delisted from Blogger’s listings or even shut down. Additional information is given once a type of violation is selected. And we have now learned that the decision-making process is “handled exclusively by human reviewers.” Good to know!

I played around a little bit with the “Report a Terms of Service Violation” screen (using my own blog, just in case), and I found it interesting that when either “Defamation/Libel/Slander” or “Hate or violence” is chosen, Google includes the following bit of information: “Please note that Blogger does not remove blogs for containing insults or negative commentary. While blogs that contain such content can be distasteful, Blogger is not in a position to arbitrate disputes.” At long last, Google is actually explaining what kind of content should not be marked as objectionable! That has been my primary point of contention with the button since its inception.

Maybe now that the Flag button’s purpose has been clarified and the process of flagging a blog requires an explanation, the button’s controversial nature will be a thing of the past.

Three Years of Blogging

2008-08-04T17:44:00.003-05:00

It was three years ago today that I became a blogger. During those first couple of years, I was quite active on this blog, but I have done very little blogging in the past year since my last anniversary post.

The main reason for that is a lengthy hiatus I took to focus my attention elsewhere. I have to admit that even though I enjoy blogging, sometimes I put a lot of pressure on myself to write something, so forcing myself to take some time away from blogging this past year was a good thing for me.

This summer, I began using FriendFeed to pull my online activities into one place, and I really enjoy the site. Using FriendFeed has led me to try out microblogging services like Tumblr and Identi.ca, which I probably would not have done otherwise. These days, I do more blogging on those services than I do here, primarily because they make it very easy to get brief thoughts out there quickly.

This weblog will continue on, but as I have said in the past, I am using it primarily for longer, more contemplative posts. Finding the time to sit down and write can often be difficult, so posting here will likely remain sporadic. If this site ever feels stagnant, you can check out my FriendFeed page to see what I am up to elsewhere on the web.

Ten Things I Learned from Obama’s World Tour

2008-07-28T20:28:00.007-05:00

Senator Barack Obama has returned from his much-publicized 12,000-mile foreign trip which took him to the Middle East (Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank), Afghanistan, and Western Europe (Germany, France, and the United Kingdom). The full impact (both internationally and domestically) of Obama’s globe-trotting has yet to be realized, but here are some things that I discovered while reading the extensive coverage of his world tour.

Obama prefers to decide on his Iraq policy before meeting with the commanders in the field.
Typically, a politician doesn’t completely make up his mind on a course of action until after taking what is described as a fact-finding trip. Of course, it is Obama’s prerogative to formulate his policies anyway he chooses, and the junior senator from Illinois has previously shown his willingness to throw convention out the window. But was it really wise for Obama to proclaim his Iraq strategy to the world before ever meeting with General David Petraeus, the U.S. ground commander in Iraq? Did he not think that there might be even a slight chance that his views would change once he had talked in person with the man who is leading the fight against al-Qaeda in that country?
Since Obama was so certain that he was right in the first place, it should probably come as no surprise that the senator returned from the trip stating that his visit to Iraq and Afghanistan reinforced what he already believed.
Senator Obama recognizes Israel’s strong friendship with… itself.
AFP accurately described it as “a statement that even his opponents could not quibble with.” Senator Obama, during a press conference in Amman, Jordan, uttered a simple truth which needed no explanation: “Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.”
Obviously, this is a silly gaffe in which the senator was thinking one thing while saying another. But I find it worth mentioning because for all the grief that liberals have given the current President over his “Bushisms,” Barack Obama — like all politicians — is not above saying some incredibly stupid things.
Prime Minister al-Maliki believes that a quick U.S. withdrawal is a good idea.
Much progress has been made in Iraq within the past year, but it seems to me that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is being overly optimistic in his army’s ability to maintain order in the country without the involvement of U.S. troops. The prime minister more or less agreed with Barack Obama’s plan for a sixteen-month withdrawal, although al-Maliki recognizes the need for continued progress in the interim. Hopefully, al-Maliki’s desire to rush toward complete Iraqi sovereignty will not have any negative effects on his country.
Obama erroneously believes himself to be a member of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee.
This one is a bit different than the previous gaffe. At another press conference, this time in Israel, Senator Obama talked about passing a bill in the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs which authorized divestment of American assets away from Iran. The problem is that Obama doesn’t sit on the Senate Banking Committee, which he called “my committee” during the press conference.
Obama’s campaign is claiming that the senator meant to say that the bill was his, not the committee. I willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it seems rather unlikely that the senator would confuse the two words.
Katie Couric can ask some good questions about the troop surge.
CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric was one member of the horde of reporters who tagged along with Obama on his overseas trip. Like many other reporters, Obama gave her a one-on-one interview during the week-long journey. But unlike very many others, Couric posed some genuinely tough questions to the man who wants to be President, particularly in the area of the troop surge’s success. I am not a big fan of Katie Couric, but I must say that I was impressed with her willingness to press Obama for answers, particularly when so few members of the media challenge him at all.
Barack Obama doesn’t sweat when working out. No, really.
This is rather ridiculous, but to read the fawning account given by a female “reporter” who witnessed Senator Obama exercising in a gym while in Germany was just too much. Anyone who could actually write the words “Wow, he didn’t even sweat! What a man!” in a newspaper report is not fit to be called a journalist. And what kind of publication is Bild that it would even print that tripe? It makes me think that the German press cares even less about journalistic objectivity than the American media (and that’s saying something).
Europeans really, really like Obama.
OK, this one I kind of already knew. But seeing his reception in the capitals of Germany, France, and the U.K. — especially the reported throng of 200,000 people who came to hear him speak in Tiergarten in Berlin — makes me think most of Europe wants to see a President Obama. And the polls tend to confirm that: a majority of surveyed British, French, and Germans citizens (60%, 64%, and 62%, respectively) all prefer to have Barack Obama elected President of the United States over John McCain. I wonder if the European exuberance for Obama would continue if the senator were to actually became President (sometimes the hope for something is better than actually having it).
Obama is a master of comic irony.
And he demonstrated that when he denied being “rigid and stubborn” with his plan for a sixteen-month timetable for withdrawal out of Iraq, while simultaneously being rigid and stubborn in his refusal to admit that the U.S. troop surge has been successful. Someone should give that man an award.
Visiting wounded troops in Germany is not high on Obama’s list of priorities.
I don’t want to make light of this one. There has been some confusion over the exact reason why Senator Obama did not visit the soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany last week. Whatever the reason for canceling the trip to Landstuhl — whether it was that the visit would be viewed as a campaign stop or that Obama could not take his staff with him — the simple fact is that the senator had the chance to spend time with those wounded soldiers, but he chose not to go. In my opinion, that was a very poor decision.
The mainstream U.S. media is “in the tank” for Obama.
This I also knew before the trip. But what I didn’t know was that the American media would be willing to cast aside all illusions of impartiality to follow the “Chosen One” around the globe. Just look at the enormous entourage of reporters — including the three big network news anchors, plus well-known political reporters from many major U.S. newspapers and magazines — who put their lives on hold for a week to follow Barack Obama around and cover the “news” of his world tour. When is the last time the media showed even close to that level of interest in any of Senator McCain’s overseas trips? (The correct answer is: never.)
To top it off, a report last week from MSNBC (which is not exactly known for fair-and-balanced political coverage) identified 143 journalists who have given campaign contributions since 2004. The vast majority of them (eighty-seven percent!) gave to liberal candidates or causes.
Once again, none of this really surprises me, but what is astonishing is how blatant the media has become in showing favoritism in its coverage of this year’s election. If Barack Obama fails to get elected President in November, it won’t be for a lack of media attention.

The Foolishness of the Federal Minimum Wage

2008-07-24T19:03:00.003-05:00

Today, the federally-mandated minimum wage in the United States increased seventy cents from $5.85 per hour to $6.55 per hour. This is the second of three minimum wage increases which will take place courtesy of a 2007 amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Liberals love to champion intrusions like this from the federal government into the American marketplace (usually, while simultaneously complaining that it is not enough). They claim that raising the minimum wage spurs economic growth and higher productivity.

Even if that were true (I personally doubt the provided reasoning), any benefits of a higher minimum wage would only have a real impact on those who either earn a minimum wage income themselves or those who depend financially on someone who does. Who earns minimum wage? The guy who bags your groceries at the supermarket and the girl who takes your money at the drive-through window, that’s who (often, even people working these low-paying jobs make more than that).

While those in favor of minimum wage hikes like to imagine millions of families struggling to survive on $6.55 an hour, the reality is that under two percent of all American workers earn the federal minimum wage, and the majority of those are teenagers or young adults working part-time jobs — not full-time jobholders who are trying to support a family.

But even for those young part-time workers, the federal minimum wage may have little to no effect on them. By my own count, twenty-five of the fifty states have wage minimums higher than the federal level. That means that at best, this year’s twelve percent increase in the federal rate only affected low-wage earners in half the country.

So, what is the point of the federal minimum wage? Relatively few Americans earn that little, and those that do are mostly young people who just entered the workforce and are working less than forty hours a week. In fact, any properly motivated American who is willing to work hard can do better than the minimum hourly wage.

Sadly, I believe the existence of the minimum wage has less to do with helping the disadvantaged than it does with politicians in Washington trying to make themselves look good and therefore stay in power. If the members of Congress can convince us that they are looking out for the well-being of the country by giving us something (a “fairer” wage, for instance), we may be more likely to remember them on Election Day. Unfortunately, that is often how it works: politicians appeal to our sense of entitlement — that we deserve more than we have — and we vote to keep them in office.

If Congress really wanted to help out Americans during this economically difficult time, it would cut spending and return the unspent revenue to the over-taxed populace. Instead, we get legislation that forces businesses to increase what they pay employees for doing low-skill, entry-level jobs regardless of their productivity or merit.

I don’t think that the minimum wage is going away anytime soon. But in the meantime, Americans should realize that raising the lower bound for earnings is a fatuous exercise which does precious little to assist the average American financially, and there are much better ways for Congress to ease the monetary burdens of its constituents and stimulate economic growth (tax cuts, domestic oil drilling, etc.) which it is simply unwilling to do.

Wimbledon Coverage Versus My DVR

2008-07-07T13:46:00.001-05:00

There was a time in my life when I might have skipped church on a Sunday morning to tune in to NBC’s “Breakfast at Wimbledon” so that I could watch the men’s singles final at the Championships, Wimbledon. But as I have gotten older and more mature (mentally and spiritually), I have worked toward getting my priorities in order. So these days, I rely upon my DVR to record tennis grand slam finals which take place on Sundays.

Unfortunately, said DVR failed me yesterday during the Federer–Nadal match. The historic match, which lasted four hours and forty-eight minutes and broke the record for longest men’s final, not only started late due to rain but also underwent two separate rain delays during play, totaling over two hours. In addition to the weather, both the third and fourth sets were quite lengthy, ending with tiebreakers. Wimbledon coverage was only scheduled for six hours on NBC, and when those six hours had elapsed, my DVR stopped recording.

I did not get a chance to begin watching the saved match until late Sunday evening. At that point, I did not know who had won and had avoided finding out all day. Having to go to work in the morning, I did not want to be up too late, but I knew it would be difficult to wait until Monday evening to watch the final without learning the result, so I decided to go ahead to view the match. Even with fast-forwarding through commercials and commentary, it still took a few hours to watch all that my DVR had saved. When the fourth set tiebreaker was over, the recording only had about thirty minutes left, and I felt fairly certain that I wouldn’t be seeing the end of the match. Sure enough, the scheduled coverage ended right after the second rain delay began with the match tied at 2–2, deuce in the fifth set.

I am the kind of person who would rather watch a sporting event play out than find out the final score after the fact. But without any way to see the remainder of the fifth set, I visited wimbledon.org to see the highlights and found out that Rafael Nadal was the victor, a really big deal considering Roger Federer had won the past five Wimbledon championships and Nadal is the first person since 1980 to win both the French Open and Wimbledon in a single year. I just wish that I could have watched the ending to this great match without knowing the result beforehand.

This is not the first time that a program has run past its intended time slot, causing my DVR to miss the ending. I have also experienced other DVR oddities in the past, such as a scheduled live program not recording because the device did not recognize it as being a new episode. Digital video recorders are a wonderful convenience, but I wish they could be a bit more intelligent in determining when to record.

I Am Still Alive

2008-06-27T16:20:00.007-05:00

People who do not know me personally but have read my weblog in the past may wonder if I have fallen off the face of the earth since I have not posted anything here in several months. Not to worry — I am still very much among the living; I just haven’t felt much like writing recently (outside of all the normal writing I have to do for my job). If I can find the time and stay properly motivated, I do hope to start blogging here again on a semi-regular basis (I know I have said that before, but this time I really mean it!).

Having said that, I won’t be posting anything else here for at least a week (probably longer) because I am leaving with my family on vacation in the morning. We will be driving an estimated thirteen hours to the world-renowned tourist destination of… Lawton, Oklahoma (OK, so not really that renowned). My brother-in-law, who is a sargeant in the Army, is stationed at nearby Fort Sill, and we will be staying with him for the week. We do plan on going to some fun and interesting places, but this is really more of a spend-time-with-family trip.

If I have some downtime during my vacation week (aren’t vacations themselves supposed to be downtime?), I may post to my link blog, which I recently started up again. Also, I created a tumblelog a couple of weeks ago to try out a more impromptu and short-form style of blogging, and I might post there from time to time as well. (Those who argue that it is dopey for me to begin a new blog when I cannot keep the ones I already have updated make a good point.)

In addition to all those blogs, I also have an account over at FriendFeed, which aggregates my doings from around the Web. For the handful of people who care to keep track of what I am up to, this is the web feed for my activity stream.

With all that said, I am going to go finish packing for my trip. I’ll write soon, I promise.

Back to Blogging

2007-12-27T15:55:00.000-06:00

I hope that everyone has been having a blessed Christmas season. I just wanted to check in since it has been a while since I last posted anything on this blog. I have kind of missed writing these past couple of months. There has been a lot going on in the news recently that I have wanted to comment on. On the other hand, the time away from blogging has been nice. I think I was getting a little burned out, so the break was relaxing.

But now, I am itching to start writing again, especially with the political season heating up. It is my intention to start blogging again at a manageable level in the new year. See you then.

Get a Live.com Email Address

2007-11-07T21:30:00.000-06:00

If you use any of Microsoft’s new Windows Live applications, you no doubt have a Windows Live ID, the new name for the old Passport single sign-on system that Microsoft has been pushing on its users for years. And if you are like most people, that ID is probably an old Hotmail address since all email accounts hosted by Microsoft double as Windows Live ID accounts.

Fortunately for those (like myself) who despise their old Hotmail accounts but have been forced to keep them around in order to log into Microsoft websites, the Redmond company is now allowing users to create brand new Windows Live IDs which include an email address using the live.com domain. Since I have always disliked the Hotmail name nearly as much as the service itself, this is a welcome change to me.

Granted, this is a brand new email account, not just a new address which points to one’s old email account. That is unfortunate, because I really don’t need another email address, plus I will still need to check my old Hotmail account since there are a few people who continue to send me mail at that address despite not having used it regularly in years.

But one neat feature of the new Live.com accounts is that they can be linked with other Live IDs, which means that I can use one login to access both accounts. That is one feature which my beloved Gmail does not offer (yet), and it would be great to have since I use a several different Google accounts, and I must log out of one before I can access the others.

For those interested in signing up for a Live.com address, now is a good time to do it. Since Microsoft has just beginning to allow its users to register email addresses with the new domain, there should be plenty of good names available.

Helping the Victims of the California Wild Fires

2007-10-30T17:48:00.001-05:00

The fires that have raged in Southern California are nearly all put out now, and the national media is turning its attention elsewhere. But although life is moving on for the rest of the country, the hardships for those personally affected by the wildfires is only just beginning.

Let us not forget those who have lost so much in this terrible disaster simply because the news media has stopped reminding us. For those who are financially able, please consider donating to one of the many nonprofit organizations which are assisting those who saw their homes and belongings consumed by fire.

Planet Chiropractic has a list of some of the reputable organizations which are accepting donations related to the California wildfires.

California Volunteers
This is the state agency that manages programs and initiatives to increase the number of Californians involved with service and volunteering.
If your business would like to make a donation to help the victims of the Southern California fires please call: 1-800-750-2858
www.californiavolunteers.org
The Red Cross
According to the organization, monetary donations are needed most. If you're sending checks they can be designated to "California Fires."
American Red Cross, PO Box 4002018, Des Moines, IA, 50340-2018
www.redcross.org
The Salvation Army
Contributions can be made on-line at www.salvationarmyusa.org, by phone at (800) 725-2769.
Wells Fargo Bank
Wells Fargo has opened a special account called the "American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund (California Wildfire Relief Effort)" to help the fire victims. Make a donation at any branch, located throughout the Midwestern and Western United States.
Locate a Wells Fargo Bank
Operation USA
This is a Los Angeles-based nongovernmental relief organization that is providing medical supplies and assisting victims who do not have direct access to support services, including farmworkers and people in rural areas. Checks can be sent to: Operation USA, 3617 Hayden Ave., Suite A, Culver City, CA 90232
Credit card donations can be made by calling (800) 678-7255 or via the web site at: www.opusa.org.

There are also many excellent faith-based organizations which I would recommend, including the aforementioned Salvation Army, Catholic Charities USA, Samaritan’s Purse, and Operation Blessing International.

For those who desire to give yet have qualms about where your dollars will end up, Charity Navigator has some tips to ensure that your money makes it to those who are suffering.

And above all, regardless of whether or not you choose to help financially, please pray for the wildfire victims. Some who are irreligious express contempt at the notion that praying serves a useful purpose, but I know for a fact that it does. Even though our human minds may never understand why tragedies like this happen, this I know: God is faithful, and He will give comfort and aid to those who call out to Him.

Priorities

2007-10-19T11:49:00.000-05:00

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been doing very much blogging recently, at least relative to what I used to do. In fact, looking at my weblog today, I noticed that I haven’t put fingers to keyboard for a whole month. That is by far the longest I have gone without posting anything during this blog’s existence.

There’s nothing to worry about; I and my whole family are well. My only excuse is that I have been busy — with life. Among responsibilities at work, projects at home, church-related functions, and quality time with my family, I just haven’t found many opportunities to sit down and blog. And with an increasing workload at my job, home improvement plans, an upcoming city-wide church outreach, plus Thanksgiving and Christmas being right around the corner (not to mention my wedding anniversary), things don’t look like they are going to slow down anytime soon.

I really enjoy writing about things that interest me, but I have been realizing that there are a lot of areas in my life that need my attention and ought to take precedence. As much as I might like to blog about the latest Google feature or Presidential debate, I have a lot of other priorities, like being a better husband, father, son, employee, servant, and friend.

That is not to say that I am going to stop blogging — not even close. But I am going to continue the slowdown while I focus on other matters which rank considerably higher in importance.

Constitution Day Is Not Being Promoted As It Should

2007-09-17T15:13:00.000-05:00

Two hundred twenty years ago today, the United States Constitution was adopted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia as the new governing document of the still fledgling nation. The Constitution was later submitted to the thirteen states for ratification, all of which eventually chose to vote for its acceptance. Since that time, it has been the primary law under which the federal government of the United States has operated and is the oldest written national constitution still in use.

In 2004, Congress passed legislation bearing an amendment which made September 17 a federal holiday to be called “Constitution Day and Citizenship Day.” The amendment was the work of Senator Robert Byrd, a man who — despite obvious flaws — has a deep admiration for this nation’s highest law. The purpose of Byrd’s amendment was to promote education about the American Constitution by requiring all institutions of learning receiving funds from the federal government to provide some kind of teaching concerning the Constitution on September 17 of each year.

Since the first Constitution Day in 2005, schools around the country have been expected to offer a constitutionally-related curriculum to their students on that day, but unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be happening as a majority of high school students know nothing about the day and cannot recall how Constitution Day was observed by their schools a year ago.

The Associated Press has the details.

Constitution Day is here and many teenagers know little about commemorating the document’s signing.
A study being released Monday by a foundation that focuses on journalism and the First Amendment found that 51 percent of high school students questioned had not heard of the day when they are required by law to learn about the Constitution.
The occasion is usually observed on or around Sept. 17, the day the document was adopted in 1787.
Just one in 10 students could remember how his high school marked the day last year, according to the study, paid for by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in Miami.
Eric Newton, vice president of the foundation’s journalism program, said he worries that an entire generation may lack a solid understanding of the document that governs America’s democracy.
“We’re concerned that teaching to the test and the emphasis on math and science is hurting the American civics education,” Newton said.
Recent national tests show that more students are learning the basics when it comes to history and civics, but are not rising beyond a modest competency in either subject.
The report did find some encouraging news. For example, 68 percent of students said they had taken a class that dealt with the First Amendment, compared with 58 percent in 2004.

What a shame that so few American students are getting a foundational education of how our government functions and what rights that they have as United States citizens. I believe that a good understanding of the Constitution is vital in order for students to learn how to be politically conscious and make informed decisions when they become voters. It is regrettable that so many schools have been failing to teach the importance of the Constitution in their classes — and continue to do so even after Congress made it a requirement.

As I mentioned two years ago, the Education Department does have ways to punish schools who fail to comply with the law concerning Constitution Day, but I doubt that is likely to happen. If enforcement was attempted, there would be a huge backlash about the federal government telling local schools what to teach.

I can certainly understand the point of those who raise those arguments; I have concerns of my own about the government’s intrusion into the education of children. But in this case, no one is ordering school officials to teaching any specific curriculum concerning the Constitution. Educational institutions are free to decide exactly what program they will offer on September 17. They just have to teach something about the Constitution today. I don’t think that is too much to ask.

My Notes on the “First in the Fall” Republican Debate

2007-09-06T12:10:00.001-05:00

The “First in the Fall” GOP Presidential debate (actually, the fifth debate thus far) was held last night at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. Eight of the ten Republicans from the previous debates returned for this one hosted once again by the Fox News Channel (Tommy Thompson and Jim Gilmore have both dropped out the race).

With the evening being moderated by Fox News’s Washington team of Brit Hume, Chris Wallace, Wendell Goler, and Carl Cameron, I felt that this was a debate to watch closely and that the questions asked would be serious and relevant — in contrast with many of the ones posed at the MSNBC and CNN debates. I was not disappointed; like the previous Fox News debate, this one was informative as well as entertaining and gave me several additional insights into the minds of the men who want to be the next leader of this country.

Since I was anticipating a good debate, I sat down to watch the ninety-minute program with pen and paper in hand in order to take notes on the candidates’ positions and performances. Here are my observations and comments.

The debate began with Brit Hume mentioning the absense of Fred Thompson, who chose to go on the Tonight Show instead. All of the candidates then got the chance to take shots at their fellow Republican who has taken his time getting into the race; there were plenty of one-liners at Thompson’s expense. I don’t necessarily agree with the attitudes expressed by several of the candidates; a man shouldn’t feel obligated to announce that he is running for office at the beginning of 2007 when the election won’t even take place until near the end of 2008.
Illegal immigration was the first important topic of the evening.
- Mitt Romney was asked a tough question about what he did to stop sanctuary cities when he was governor of Massachusetts, and I thought he answered it well. Romney is in favor of cutting federal funding to cities which proclaim to be sanctuary cities; I like that idea.
- Rudy Giuliani has a different view than Romney on sancuary cities and illegal immigrants; like his view on abortion, one could call it “nuanced.” Honestly, I don’t understand exactly what his view is. Giuliani did not say that he condones the act of entering the U.S. illegally, but he did say that he wanted the people in New York City to feel safe while he was mayor. He wanted residents of New York to feel like they could report a crime committed against them without fear. As Chris Wallace noted, Mayor Guiliani stated back in 1994 that it was unfair for illegals to have be on the run like fugitives; he also made the comment that he wanted hard-working undocumented immigrated to come to New York.
- John McCain stated that no one is for amnesty. Really? I could have sworn that there are plenty of open-border folks here in the U.S. — most notably, the millions of immigrants who have crossed the border illegally. Senator McCain also said that according to the dictionary, amnesty is forgiveness, and the immigration bill he supported was not amnesty because it included some penalties for illegal aliens. That is technically true, but the bill also allows all undocumented workers to say in the country indefinitely — whether or not they have a criminal record. That may not meet Webster’s definition of amnesty, but it does make for really bad law.
- Mike Huckabee thinks that some who oppose illegal immigration are racist. I don’t deny that; it could very well be true, but so what? The vast majority of those who are against illegal immigration have legitimate concerns which ought to be addressed. I think Huckabee was skirting the real issue.
- Tom Tancredo got a little fiery when describing his feeling that some of his fellow Republicans are not sincere when it comes to border control. Tancredo is of the opinion that some (he didn’t offer any names) are only speaking the political rhetoric about illegal immigration because the subject appeals to the base of the party. I don’t know that to be true, and honestly, neither does the congressman. As with Huckabee and his comment on racism, Representative Tancredo is talking about thoughts in others which he cannot prove. It adds little to the debate.
- Duncan Hunter wants to build a wall — a really big wall. Hunter was asked about the practicality of building and maintaining a 854-mile border fence which would span California to Texas, but he did not really address the issue in his response, instead saying that building the fence is the law, so it has to be done. The congressman also dodged the part of the question which raised concerns about the property rights of ranchers whose land the border fence would cross.
After a lengthy round of immigration-related questions, the next topic was about family values and the disgraced U.S. senator Larry Craig, who has said he intends to resign but may still choose not to do so. Sam Brownback finally got a chance to speak and gave a nice response about ethics and family values. Brownback thinks that Craig should stick by his planed resignation, and Duncan Hunter agreed with him. Interestingly, Congressman Hunter addressed the same point that I did in a blog post last week — about the divergent attitudes regarding corruption in both political parties. In Hunter’s words: “When our guys have problems like this [referring to Larry Craig’s sex scandal], they leave — they leave the Senate or they leave the House. When the Democrats have problems like this, they often make them chairman of their respective committees.”
The next topic of discussion was abortion. Mitt Romney wants Roe v. Wade overturned so that states can draft their own pro-life legislation in its place (although some states like New York and Romney’s home state of Massachusetts will no doubt create pro-abortion laws instead). While refusing to call it murder himself, Romney acknowledged that abortion is the taking of a human life and said that he wants “to change hearts and minds.” In slight contrast, Mike Huckabee is not so much about changing people’s views on abortion as he is about stopping it altogether. Huckabee favors a human life amendment to the Constitution, which would state that life begins at conception. I actually agree with both men. Overturning Roe v. Wade is a good first step to ending abortion, but instead of stopping there, I think Huckabee is right that a Constitutional amendment is needed in order to permanently protect life in all fifty states.
Rudy Giuliani, who is for strict gun control laws, received a question about people being allowed to carry guns to deter crime. Giuliani did not give an opinion one way or the other, instead using his time to once again remind everyone that he reduced crime in New York City. According to Giuliani, the drop in crime, including a seventy-five percent reduction in shootings, was the result of focusing on criminals instead of guns.
Ron Paul thinks that the problem with airline security is that the federal government is in charge of it. He said that airlines should be responsible for the protection of their passengers, not the government. Paul also said that there would have been less chance of 9/11 taking place if passengers had been allowed to carry guns. I can’t argue with that. There are many areas where I disagree with Congressman Paul, but this is not one of them. Personal responsibility is an important component of any truly free country. We cannot expect the government to take care of us.
Sam Brownback seems to get most of the questions about family values. His next question was about gay marriage. Brownback said that he supports a Constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage, which resulted in a mixed response from the audience. The senator acknowledged that there was division on the subject but asserted that permitting same-sex couples to wed would take the sacredness out of marriage and cause marriage rates to drop. Brown noted that thirty-six percent of children in this country are born out of wedlock, and while that doesn’t spell immediate doom for those kids, the absolute best environment in which to raise a child is a family that includes “a mom and a dad bonded together for life.” Well said.
The war in Iraq and beyond was the source of several questions. With the exception of Ron Paul, the Republican candidates are pretty much in agreement that we cannot leave Iraq right now.
- Mitt Romney said that there should be no timetable for getting out of Iraq. He does hope that our troops can be pulled back to only a support role in the near future.
- Governor Romney also made the point that the surge in Iraq “is apparently working.” John McCain seized the opportunity and jumped on Romney’s statement for its lack of resoluteness: “Governor, the surge is working. … Not apparently — it’s working.” McCain’s tatic to make it seem as if Romney doubted the effectiveness of the surge was silly. Romney simply meant that he was holding out final judgement until General David Petraeus gives his report to Congress, and he said so.
- Ron Paul just cannot get out of Iraq fast enough. He is totally unconcerned with the condition of Iraq if we leave now and believes that suggestions of a “bloodbath” in the event of a premature withdrawal of U.S. forces are wrong. In Representative Paul’s mind, the whole war was an illegal invasion waged by misguided neoconservatives, and 9/11 happened because the U.S. has a bad foreign policy. I could not disagree with the congressman more. Although I appreciate Paul’s views on a limited federal government and adherence to the Constitution, I believe that his isolationist philosophy in the matter of world affairs would be so detrimental to the interests of the United States and our allies that I could never in good conscience vote for the man.
- Much like fellow senator and Presidential candidate Joe Biden, Sam Brownback has a plan to create three separate states within Iraq, separating the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds. I am not sure that Brownback’s proposal is the best way or that it would make the political situation in Iraq any better than it is now. I am no expert, but it seems to me that isolating groups with differing views would make it much more difficult for the country to ever come together under one government.
- Mike Huckabee believes that we must continue with the surge; I agree with him on that point. But Huckabee also thinks that the United States “broke” Iraq, and we should continue our efforts in the country because we “bought it” when we “broke it.” I think Huckabee is wrong, wrong, wrong! To say that the U.S. broke Iraq is to imply that it was unbroken before the war, and that is far from the truth. Iraq was hardly in pristine condition under the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein, who murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people. Whatever condition the country of Iraq is in right now, it is tremendously better than when Saddam was controlling it.
- Duncan Hunter declared that the right way out of Iraq is through victory. He also believes that we will not be there for a really long time because of the determination of the American forces to finish the job. I hope he is right.
Romney is a proponent of wiretapping people or locations within the country for national security reasons and said that preventing a terrorist attack “means good intelligence work.” In response to concerns about infringing on civil liberties, Romney stated, “the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive.”
There is some disagreement among the candidates about the definition of torture. Tom Tancredo has no problem with waterboarding enemy combatants to get information out of them. Although he opposes torturing detainees, Tancredo said that he does not consider that particular technique to be torture and that he “would go to great lengths” in order to keep America safe. John McCain is — as he has made known in nearly every debate — fiercely opposed to torture. But the senator doesn’t seem to make any distinctions between torture and non-torture techniques. He didn’t express it plainly, but I infer that McCain considers waterboarding to be torture and therefore would never permit its use. McCain asserts that torturing prisoners would harm our country’s reputation around the world. I don’t disagree with him, but I still think Senator McCain shouldn’t view every method of intense coercion as falling under the blanket term of torture.
Rudy Giuliani would not close the prison at Guantánamo Bay if he becomes President. He made the excellent point that we would have no safe place to keep the detainees if the prison were closed down; it would be unwise to move them inside the U.S., and other countries will no take them.
Duncan Hunter has no problem with holding enemy combatants indefinitely. He attempted to make his case by stating that in some cases, the U.S. has been “too liberal” with releasing the enemy, and terrorists who have been let go have gone back to fighting our troops. While that is certainly true, I hope that Representative Hunter is not saying that detainees shouldn’t be provided with any recourse for proving that they are not a threat to the United States.
Senator Brownback said that he would not give his Vice President as much authority and independence as Dick Cheney has had. What exactly does he think Cheney has been doing?
Since this was a Republican debate, there were plenty of questions about lowering taxes. I think this may be the one point where all the candidates were in complete agreement — taxes should be low.
- Two of the eight Republicans have not signed the pledge from the interest group Americans for Tax Reform to oppose tax increases: John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Neither of the two candidates has any plans to approve a tax raise as President but still will not sign the pledge. McCain said he stands on his record, and that should be enough. He also said that tax cuts are only part of the equation for fiscal responsiblity; Congressional spending must also be cut. Rudy Giuliani stated that he won’t take the pledge as a matter of principle. If he signed that pledge, then every lobbyist group in Washington might expect him to sign pledges for their issues. That is why the former mayor has decided to only take one pledge as President: to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Giuliani’s view makes sense to me, and I have no problem with either him or Senator McCain choosing not to sign any pledges that are put before them.
- Mitt Romney will work to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and will “kill the death tax once and for all.” No complaints here.
- Mike Huckabee wants to eliminate all income-based taxes and the IRS and enact the FairTax, which is a plan for a national sales tax. I haven’t yet read up on the FairTax in detail, but I know enough to realize that it would definitely be better than our current tax system. I have personally been opposed to the notion of taxing productivity since the first day I ever held a job, and I would welcome an overhaul of the way that Congress collects taxes.
Unsurprising, Ron Paul would work toward eliminating most of the federal government if elected President, including but not limited to: DHS, the CIA, the IRS, the Fed, ED, and DOT. Paul’s primary motivation for shrinking the government to its essential functions is the inefficiency of the bureaucracy which has burgeoned in the past century. I am in favor of a limited federal government myself, but I tend to think that Paul is taking it to the extreme, wanting to do away with government functions like foreign surveillance and homeland security which have become essential in this current age. I would be glad to see the size of our government bureaucracy shrink, but I don’t think it should return to its 1789 level.
Throughout the evening, Carl Cameron interviewed Durham residents at the local diner Young’s Restaurant. While the opinions of the locals and their questions toward the candidates were somewhat interesting, I could have done without the distraction. I watched the debate to see and hear the Presidental candidates, not the patrons of Young’s. No offense to the people of Durham, New Hampshire, but they are not running for the highest office in the land, so I don’t particularly care about their views.
I was pleased to see the return of the “plausible scenario,” where Brit Hume lays out a realistic situation and all the candidates get the opportunity to describe how they would respond. This was a component of the previous Fox News debate, and I thought it worked well both then and now. This time, the scenario centered on Iran being able to produce a nuclear weapon, ordering UN inspectors to leave the country, aiding the insurgency in Iraq, and making threats against the nation of Israel.

I thought most of the candidates gave good responses to the scenario. Senator Brownback described the scenario as “all too likely” and unfortunately, I agree. Of course, a couple of Presidential hopefuls felt the need to attack the question instead of just answering it honestly. Representative Hunter said he hate answering hypotheticals but still offered a decent response. But Mike Huckabee completely stonewalled and refused to address the scenario, calling it “hypothetical” and “very detailed.” The next President of the United States will likely have to deal directly in Iran, so this is an important issue which I don’t think candidates should be dodging.
Obviously, since Ron Paul’s foreign policy is essentially to leave the rest of the world alone, he would not do anything about a nuclear Iran. Not only that, Paul also asserted that Israel “can take care of themselves.” Nice. You know, I can appreciate the fact that Representative Paul does not want to get in the middle of every conflict in the world, but there is such a thing as being isolationist to the point that it is detrimental to our own security. I don’t think Paul understands that we cannot just close ourselves off from the rest world and expect everyone to leave us alone.

In closing, I really enjoyed this debate. For me, the Fox News Channel has proven twice now that they know how to organize and moderate an excellent Presidential debate. I have grown tired of the ones conducted by other networks, which seem monotonous and irrelevent, but I like that the Fox News debates have challenged the candidates and really addressed the important issues. The Democrats should take notice and get over their bias against Fox News; not only will the Democratic candidates be treated fairly and respectfully, but they will also have a larger audience to express their ideas in front of since FNC has more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined.

The Feed Is Working Again

2007-09-04T21:12:00.000-05:00

At long last, I have finally taken the time to fix the problem with this blog’s web feed. The issue was entirely my own fault; some custom code I was running to output the feed had stopped running. I have now corrected the problem, and I plan on monitoring my feed more closely in the future to prevent future outages. Thanks to everyone who brought the problem with the web feed to my attention, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

As an added bonus, I have now merged the feeds from this blog and my link blog using Yahoo! Pipes (a powerful yet easy-to-use tool if ever I saw one). From a reader’s standpoint, there is little reason for me to maintain two separate web feeds for my content, so from now on, I will publish only one feed for both blogs.

The newly-merged, fully-operational web feed can be subscribed to from this link.

A Clear Difference Between Republicans and Democrats

2007-09-01T19:53:00.000-05:00

The sex scandal involving Idaho senator Larry Craig and the immediate pressure he received to resign from members of his own party has reminded me of a distinct difference in the attitudes of the Republican and Democratic parties in regards to impropriety in their midst. While it is often said that both political parties in the United States are essentially the same (and sadly, the actions of some Republicans and Democrats give credence to that view), the two parties respond quite differently when the ethical failings of their members are brought to light.

In the cases of Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Bob Ney, and others, the Republican response is most often instantaneous denunciation and ostracism. By contrast, Democrats typically either rally around their bad apples (William Jefferson, Jim McDermott) or largely ignore their comrades’ misconduct and divert attention away from it (John Murtha, Alan Mollohan).

Despite the spin of some political partisans, neither party can lay sole claim to the corruption in Washington, D.C. But it is evident to me that one party is far more persistent is stamping out corruption than the other. As Tom Delay shrewdly noted on the Today show this week, “There are scandals that need to be addressed. Republicans address them, Democrats re-elect them.”

Google Earth Shows Us the Stars

2007-08-23T16:41:00.001-05:00

There is a new version of Google Earth out which shows users more than just — uh, well — the Earth. Version 4.2 of GE now offers space imagery — naturally, from the perspective of us earth-dwellers.

Most of the photography is from the Hubble Space Telescope, and it is impressive. Stars, nebulae, and galaxies — it is all there. According to the press release, the new Sky feature gives users the opportunity “to view and navigate through 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies.” Color me impressed.

As a amateur star-gazer, I really like the addition of the astronomical images to Google Earth. Sure, it takes the software beyond its original purpose, but in this instance, I think that is all right, especially since GE is still primarily earth-focused. Before, the application just allowed us to look down upon the earth; now it also includes the ability to look upward from the earth. As it says on the Google Earth site, “Earth doesn't sit in a vacuum… that would be an awful waste of space.” I couldn’t agree more.

But if I could offer one minor complaint about the new version, it would be that a user has to choose between viewing either the earth or the sky instead of being able to see both at the same time. It would be really nice if Google Earth offered a composite view which would allow looking at the earth’s horizon and the night sky simultaneously. Perhaps that can be included in a future release.

Update (2007-09-01): As much I like like the sky view, something even cooler has been discovered in Google Earth 4.2 — a flight simulator! According to Google Operating System, the simulator is an Easter egg which can be activated by pressing Ctrl+Alt+A with the software open and the application focus on the globe.

“Pilots” have a choice between two different aircrafts (an F-16 “Viper” jet fighter or a SR22 propeller airplane) and can choose to take off from a number of various airports around the world or begin flying from the current location.

It may not be as good as Microsoft Flight Simulator, but it is still very cool and shows some of the potential that Google Earth has as a platform for other applications.

By What Name Should We Call God?

2007-08-17T23:08:00.000-05:00

The proper name to ascribe to the one Supreme Being has been a matter of contention among monotheistic groups for centuries. One Catholic bishop seeks to make it really simple; according to him, everyone should just call God Allah.

A Roman Catholic Bishop in the Netherlands has proposed people of all faiths refer to God as Allah to foster understanding, stoking an already heated debate on religious tolerance in a country with one million Muslims.
Bishop Tiny Muskens, from the southern diocese of Breda, told Dutch television on Monday that God did not mind what he was named and that in Indonesia, where Muskens spent eight years, priests used the word “Allah” while celebrating Mass.
“Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn’t we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? … What does God care what we call him? It is our problem.”
A survey in the Netherlands’ biggest-selling newspaper De Telegraaf on Wednesday found 92 percent of the more than 4,000 people polled disagreed with the bishop’s view, which also drew ridicule.
“Sure. Let’s call God Allah. Let’s then call a church a mosque and pray five times a day. Ramadan sounds like fun,” Welmoet Koppenhol wrote in a letter to the newspaper.
Gerrit de Fijter, chairman of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, told the paper he welcomed any attempt to “create more dialogue”, but added: “Calling God ‘Allah’ does no justice to Western identity. I see no benefit in it.”
A spokesman from the union of Moroccan mosques in Amsterdam said Muslims had not asked for such a gesture.

I have no problem with referring to God as Allah in principle. After all, the word simply means “God” in Arabic, and Christians who live in Arabic-speaking countries use that name just as Muslims do.

But the term does have a strong Islamic connotation since the majority of Arabic speakers are, in fact, Muslim, and the Qur’an and other holy texts of Islam were written in Arabic.

The AP article quoted above does not mention specifically why Muskens thinks that everyone should use the word Allah (other than it being “beautiful”), and I am curious as to why the bishop prefers the Arabic word over all other words for God in the world’s various languages. Arabic is only the fourth most spoken language; Mandarin, Spanish, and English are all more widely used. If one is looking for a universal word for God, why not choose from one of those languages?

My feeling is that Bishop Muskens’s choice of calling God Allah has a lot to do with its strong connection with Islam; I believe that he wants to use the same name for God that the vast majority of Muslims use in order to smooth tensions with the growing Muslim population in the Netherlands. While desiring to improve relations with the adherents of Islam is certainly admirable, I think that conforming our religious terms with those of Islam is an awful decision for three reasons.

One, it dilutes the uniqueness of Christianity. I really don’t want to get into whether or not Christians and Muslims worship the same God. I have my own thoughts on that, but they are somewhat irrelevant as far as this point is concerned. But even if one argued that the Allah of Islam is the same as the first Person of the Holy Trinity in the Christian faith, it goes without saying that Muslims do not recognize the divinity of Jesus or even acknowledge the existence of the Holy Spirit.

In Islam, there is only one god — Allah — and he neither begets nor is he begotten (strongly implying that there is no Trinity). In stark contrast, Christianity teaches that Jesus is the Son of the Living God, and only through Him can men be saved from their sins. I have heard liberal theologians attempt to make a case for Christianity and Islam being complementary religions, and I have the feeling that Bishop Muskens likely agrees with that notion, which is why he sees no problem with recommending a universal name for God which comes from the language of Muslims. But it were true that there are multiple paths to God — that both Christianity and Islam are equally valid — then the Christian faith holds no special significance, and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was entirely in vain.

Two, making the concession of calling the God of the Bible Allah could very likely fuel religious extremism instead of squelching it. Though Muskens might think it is merely a symbolic gesture of good faith to the followers of Islam, it could easily be seen differently by practicing Muslims. According to Islam, there is no god but Allah, so for Christians around the world to call God by that name could be seen as a legitimization of the teachings of Islam.

But don’t expect Muslims to be grateful for this concession. Rather, it would demonstrate to hard-line Muslims, who perceive Christianity to be a corrupt religion, that Christians are far too weak-willed to stand firm for their own faith. Seeing Christians defer to Allah would be validation for fundamentalist Muslims that Islam is the one, true way and that they have the right to dominate people with other beliefs. Instead of uniting the followers of the two religions, I believe that sharing a common name for God could only lead to even greater hostilities, especially since from the Muslim perspective, Christian who worship and pray to Allah are no less “infidels” than they would be otherwise.

And third, expecting everyone to call God Allah may lessen people’s perception of His personal nature. One of the many wonderful things about the Lord is that He is not bound by any particular language, and each person can speak to Him in his own vernacular. But demanding that people refer to Him using a name which is only meaningful to speakers of a foreign tongue can make God Himself feel foreign and distant. That could potentially hinder people from experiencing God’s presence and growing closer to Him.

Tiny Muskens was right about one thing: God is not concerned with what we call Him. But instead of interpreting that to mean that we should all conform to calling Him by a single name, I think that each person should feel free to call God by whatever term that person finds to be most meaningful to him and which encourages him to develop a closer relationship with the Creator of the universe.

Whether we call Him God, Lord, Father, the Almighty, Jehovah, Yahweh, or even Allah is not the most important thing. What matters most is that we honor Him and obey His commandments.

Wikipedia and Chinese Censorship

2007-08-14T21:56:00.000-05:00

The government of the People’s Republic of China is an evil, oppressive entity which silences all dissent and severely restricts the freedoms of its citizens. This is a fact upon which all reasonable and honest people should agree. Regrettably, many Westerners feign ignorance of the harsh reality that the world’s most populous nation is run by a cabal of well-dressed thugs who commit human-rights abuses on a daily basis.

Even worse, far too many Western companies are willing to shelve their integrity in their dealings with the Communist country and submit to whatever reprehensible rules the PRC mandates for doing business within its borders. Internet companies Yahoo! and Google are two often-cited examples of American corporations which have been willing to operate in China under its governmental restrictions. In their case, this means censoring their search results by removing any content which the “People’s Republic” doesn’t want their people to see. I made a special point of criticizing Google for its censorship of Chinese search results because one of its corporate mottos happens to be “Don’t be evil.”

Because so many companies in the West seem to be all too eager to assist the Communist Party of China in oppressing the Chinese people, I was very pleased to learn that Wikipedia, the Internet’s most popular encyclopedia, has no intentions of censoring itself.

According to Radio Taiwan International, Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, said at the Wikimania 2007 conference in Taipei, Taiwan earlier this month that he would be traveling to China in September to meet with government officials to discuss the issue of Wikipedia’s being blocked in the speech-suppressing country. Wales then promised the conference attendees that he would not agree to censoring the website’s content in order to gain the approval of the Communist state.

I applaud Jimmy Wales’s commitment to keeping Wikipedia free from censorship. I have been critical of some of his other decisions concerning the online encyclopedia, including the discontinuation of “link juice” to sites to which Wikipedia links, but on this matter, Wales has made the right decision.

The citizens of a free, democratic nation should never willingly help a totalitarian regime circumscribe what people are allowed to see, hear, and learn. Companies like Yahoo! and Google may think that it is good for business and that giving the Chinese people limited exposure to their products is better than them having no access at all, but the dreadful truth is that the companies are aiding a brutal dictatorship in controlling what its subjects are permitted to know in order to keep them under its dominion. Such activity ought to be denounced by all people who consider themselves to be of moral principles.

It’s Always Hot in August

2007-08-13T11:16:00.000-05:00

It has been really hot here in Alabama for the past week. That is not really surprising; the forecast is always “hot and humid” for this time of the year, but for several days now, we have had record-breaking temperatures. It is no longer just hot; it is extremely hot. I even told my wife this week that I wouldn’t need to mow our lawn because the intense heat of the sun has dried the grass so much that it has actually shrunk instead of grown.

As should be expected by now, the media is using the higher-than-average temperatures to push its theory of catastrophic climate change. But I don’t buy it. The hot weather which the alarmists in the media and elsewhere are calling the result of mankind’s destructive abuse of the planet by burning fossil fuels, I simply call August.

I am not trying to downplay the seriousness of summer heat. Regrettably, hyperthermia (heat stroke) kills dozens of Americans each year. While the loss of life due to overexposure to heat is tragic and in many cases preventable, I don’t believe that the worldwide population is culpable for those deaths because the people of earth put out lots of carbon dioxide.

Living in the South, I have come to expect summers with extreme temperatures and high humidity, although I am not sure that I can say that I have ever really become accustomed to them. I just know to stay out of the sun during the hottest part of the day, to run the air conditioner, and to drink plenty of water. Tragically, many people (often the elderly) fail to take the necessary precautions to protect themselves and inevitably succumb to the dangerous heat.

As sad as these instances of heat-related death may be, I refuse to accept the notion that a person who drives a car, grills out, and mows his lawn is partly to blame for the deadly heat. I have no problem with conserving energy (in fact, I am a strong advocate of it), but the way that many environmental extremists lay blame at the feet of ordinary people living their everyday lives is ridiculous. Everyone produces carbon dioxide (it’s called breathing), and summer — especially August in the northern hemisphere — is almost always hot. I think that attempting to establish a correlation between the two is troublesome at best and impossible at worst.

I wonder what the global warming alarmists will say in a few years when there is a summer with lower-than-average temperatures. Chances are, like last year’s Atlantic hurricane season which produced relatively few storms, they will ignore that year’s data because it won’t fit their human-blaming ideology.

Utah’s Worst Mining Disasters

2007-08-08T10:45:00.000-05:00

The Crandall Canyon Mine cave-in this week in Utah which has trapped six coal miners hundreds of meters underground is the latest reminder to the world about how extremely hazardous the occupation of mining is. But this latest mining accident is not even the close to being the worst ever — even in Utah.

The Salt Lake Tribune has published a list of the six worst mining disasters in the state’s history:

WINTER QUARTERS NEAR SCOFIELD: (May 1, 1900) An explosion at the Winter Quarters coal mine near Scofield in Carbon County killed 200 men and boys. It is considered the worst mining accident in Utah history. The cause of the explosion was never determined, but it may have been caused by leaking methane gas or errant coal dust. As many as four people survived. The mine reopened in June or July of the same year, but is now closed.
CASTLEGATE: (March 8, 1924) An explosion at the Castlegate coal mine near Helper in Carbon County killed 171 miners and one rescue worker. The explosion is considered the state's second worst mining accident. There were no survivors and the cause of the explosion was never determined. The mine reopened several months later but is now closed.
STANDARDVILLE: (Feb. 6, 1930) An explosion at the Standardville coal mine killed 20 miners and three rescuers. Investigators believe the cause was leaking carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide gas. At least nine people survived.
SUNNYSIDE: (May 9, 1945) An explosion at the Sunnyside coal mine in Carbon County killed 23 miners. Investigators believe the cause was leaking methane gas.
KANE CREEK: (Aug. 28, 1963) An explosion at the Kane Creek potash mine in Moab killed 18 people. It is considered one of the five worst metal and nonmetal mine disasters since 1940.
WILBERG: (Dec. 19, 1984) A fire at the Wilberg coal mine killed 26 men and one woman. Investigators believe a faulty air compressor overheated when it was allowed to run unattended. It took about a year to recover all the bodies. The mine never reopened.

Even in the early twenty-first century, coal is still the largest electricity-generating fuel in the world, and the only way to acquire large quantities of it is to extract it out of the coal seams located deep underground. While modern technology has made the coal mining of today much safer and more productive than in years past, the presence of humans is still required in the mines.

One hopes for the day when the technology is advanced enough that mining robots can do all the work inside the mines and be controlled remotely from above ground. Until that day arrives, we will continue to hear semi-regular news reports of workers being trapped and even dying as a result of mining accidents.

Please pray for these six men who are still trapped in the Crandall Canyon Mine. The longer it takes for rescuers to reach them, the lower their chances of survival become.

A Hundred Grand for Proof of Man-Made Global Warming

2007-08-07T17:58:00.000-05:00

Think you can prove that humans are to blame for climate change on earth? Then here is your chance to win an easy hundred grand.

The Web site JunkScience.com has launched the Ultimate Global Warming Challenge, which is offering $100,000 to the first person who can prove “in a scientific manner” that human beings are responsible for a harmful increase in the planet’s overall temperature.

In order to win, an entry for the UGWC must specifically reject the following two hypotheses outlined on the website:

UGWC Hypothesis 1
Manmade emissions of greenhouse gases do not discernibly, significantly and predictably cause increases in global surface and tropospheric temperatures along with associated stratospheric cooling.
UGWC Hypothesis 2
The benefits equal or exceed the costs of any increases in global temperature caused by manmade greenhouse gas emissions between the present time and the year 2100, when all global social, economic and environmental effects are considered.

The rules for the challenge promise that the winning entry will receive the dough “in a single, lump sum payment.” They also note that there is no “promise or guarantee that the UGWC will have any winner.”

Thankfully, in order to provide plenty of time for people to provide scientific evidence of global warming, the challenge will run until December of next year. The winner (if any) will be announced in February 2009.

The site includes a page which will display participants’ entries for the contest, but at the moment, the page only says, “We’ll post ’em when we get ’em!” in all uppercase letters. I look forward to seeing what evidence people will give to substantiate their claims that we are — in the words of environmentalist Charles Secrett — “killing the planet.”

The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge really is an excellent idea. If all the global warming alarmists truly believe that there is a scientific consensus on the matter, then it should be an easy task to proffer some proof. My personal opinion is that when the results of the challenge are announced in eighteen months, there will be no winner — not because I think the contest is rigged, mind you, but because I don’t believe that a sufficient rejection of the hypotheses quoted above could possibly be given.

My Second Blogging Anniversary

2007-08-04T11:43:00.000-05:00

I just realized that today marks the two-year point from the day that I made my very first post on this weblog. I remembered that it was sometime in early August but had I not checked the date of that first post, I would have missed it entirely.

It’s really amazing; two years seems like such a short time, and I vividly remember writing that first post. On the other hand, two years of blogging feels incredibly long. Looking back, I see that I have thought up 569 posts in that span of time. That may not seem like very many to more dedicated bloggers, but for me, that equates to a huge investment of time, especially since most of those posts are moderately long (I rarely write a one-paragraph article).

I have slowed my writing down considerably in this blog’s second year compared to its first. Out of those 569 posts, 339 were from the first year. That doesn’t mean I have had less to say this past year; it just means I have devoted less time to saying it, out of both necessity and choice. Actually, if one includes the link blog that I began in January and all my comments over there (over 250 entries so far this year), I have really written more posts this year than last; they were just generally shorter in length.

My intention right now is to continue the plan that I outlined in a post a month ago, doing my most frequent blogging in smaller increments over at my “Links of Interest” weblog and writing a couple of longer, more contemplative posts for here each week. That seems like the best way to keep this blog going with semi-frequent updates but also to preserve my sanity by not burning myself out. So, in other words, don’t be surprised if my posting here slows down even further.

One final comment: thank you to all those who read this blog regularly! I enjoy writing and would still continue to do it even if no one cared to read my words, but I appreciate the fact that I have a faithful (albeit small) audience of readers who genuinely are interested in what I have to say.

The City of Ave Maria Is Open

2007-07-24T09:19:00.000-05:00

Ave Maria, the Catholic-inspired American town which I wrote about nearly a year and a half ago, has now opened to the public.

To mark the opening, ABC’s Good Morning America did a profile on the unusually faith-based community.

The Florida town of Ave Maria is like many other large family neighborhoods. The town will have 11,000 homes in its community.
But unlike so many other communities, Ave Maria has a specific purpose. The quaint location isn’t built for golfers or retirees like so many other Florida developments. Ave Maria is a refuge of sorts for Christian values in a secular age.
It opens its gates to the public for the first time on Saturday [July 21]. It is the brainchild of Dominos Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, who built the town as part of his life-long dream. The staunch Catholic envisioned a community that would draw residents who shared his Catholic values.

I assume Protestants would be welcome as well — even though we are not truly part of the “Church” — but the city itself is designed with a specifically Catholic atmosphere:

The town is centered around an 1,100-seat Roman Catholic church and a traditional Catholic university.
No adult book stores or strip clubs adorn the town, and local businesses are urged not to sell contraceptives or birth control.

My prediction that the ACLU would target this town seems to be dead-on:

But some civil libertarians are raising objections to this modern-day city of God.
“It is too early to tell from the facts whether there is a constitutional violation, but we’re mindful and alert,” said Rebecca Harrison Steele of the American Civil Liberties Union.

What violation to the Constitution could there possibly be? Where in the nation’s highest governing document does it state that founding a city on Roman Catholic principles is prohibited? The ACLU has no a case, but that does not mean they won’t try to attack this town which defiantly stands against their goal of a completely secular country.

Although the ACLU hides its real agenda behind fabricated concerns over constitutionality, Tom Monaghan, the founder of Ave Maria, makes his own agenda crystal clear:

Monaghan has said his goal is to help as many people as possible get to Heaven. And he hopes these homeowners will have a head start.

I pray that he is successful in his mission and that the city of Ave Maria is the salt that flavors its neighboring communities with strong Christian values and a deep desire for godliness.

Google Has Ended Its “Related Links” Service

2007-07-23T08:18:00.000-05:00

In April of last year, Google released a widget of sorts that website owners could add to their sites to display links to pages with similar content. These “related links” pointed to news items, blogs, and web search results which were relevant to the text of the page where the widget was added.

I added the component to my post pages here so that my readers would have links to other pages similar in nature to what I was writing about. But like Google’s AdSense program, the relevance of the dynamic content was not always high because the code was just matching words and phrases instead of actually understanding the context of the post. The widget really worked best when I wrote about a topic that was getting a lot of attention in the news. Sometimes when my posts were on less-talked-about subjects, Google didn’t display any links at all, instead only showing a search box. But most of the time, the related links worked and were interesting enough, so I decided to leave the component on my site.

Recently, though, it seemed that the only thing the Related Links box was showing was the search field. I didn’t think much about it at first, but then I realized that links were not being displayed even for topics that were heavily covered in the news.

It turns out that Google has discontinued the Related Links service. I only know this because of a post over at Google Blogoscoped. No one at Google bothered to notify the people using the widget; I guess they just expected us to figure it out since related links no longer show up (however, the search field that is there in the place of the links does still work).

Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped contacted Google about Related Links, and this was their reply:

As of April 30, 2007, we ceased providing the related links service. Related Links was one of many Google Labs products that we had developed experimentally as part of our commitment to ongoing innovation.
Through our evaluation of the Labs product, we identified the most compelling functionalities of Related Links and integrated them into new and improved products, like the AJAX Search API and AdSense Link Units. Current customers can now use these alternative products, which offer even more flexibility and are even more powerful at helping publishers make useful information accessible to their users.

So, basically, the service has not been operational for nearly three months now, and Google did not announce it to anyone outside of the company until someone inquired about it. Although I like a lot of what Google does, this really seems like a poor way to handle the situation. They are certainly within their right to end one service when better services are released, but Google should have gotten the word out that Related Links would no longer work so that webmasters could remove the component from their websites. They do have an official blog which is useful for this kind of situation. Although not as widely read, they could have even made the announcement on either the AJAX Search API blog or the AdSense blog. However they might have chosen to let people know, not telling anyone from April to July was the wrong approach.

Anyway, my main reason for writing this post was not to criticize Google for a bad decision but to let people know that the Related Links component has been discontinued, and I have removed it from my website.

Barbaric!

2007-07-21T18:59:00.000-05:00

The story of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and his indictment over his involvement in a dog-fighting operation has been featured prominently in the news in recent days. It is one of those tales that was bound to receive a lot of attention because it includes two ratings-garnering ingredients: 1) a celebrity on the wrong side of the law and 2) cruel treatment of animals.

Not surprisingly, some lawmakers in Washington felt the need this week to publicly decry the actions of Michael Vick, as if the issue was not already receiving plenty of media exposure. Senator John Kerry, who was “deeply disturbed” by Vick’s indictment, not only called on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to suspend the Falcons’ quarterback but also promised to introduce legislation to eliminate dog fighting — even though the sport is already illegal (one presumes his bill would target some of the activities surrounding dog fighting that are currently legal so as not to be a complete rehash of the federal laws already on the books).

But the most amusing response to the alleged crime came from Senator Robert Byrd, an avid dog-lover. The eighty-nine-year-old lawmaker gave a riveting twenty-four-minute speech on the Senate floor Thursday on the evils of dog fighting. A full transcript of Byrd’s emotion-filled address does not appear to be online right now, but to give you a taste of the zaniness of the speech, here is an assortment of quotes which I pulled from news articles:

“It is a brutal, sadistic event motivated by barbarism of the worst sort and cruelty of the worst, worst, worst, sadistic kind. One is left wondering: Who are the real animals? Who are the real animals, who are the real animals — the creatures inside the ring or the creatures outside the ring?”
“Hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of dollars are often at stake in the breeding, the training, and the selling of fighting dogs. How inhuman, how dastardly!”
“The training of these poor creatures … to turn themselves into fighting machines is simply barbaric. Barbaric! Barbaric! Barbaric! Let that word resound from hill to hill and from mountain to mountain, from valley to valley across this broad land. Barbaric, barbaric!”

As amusing as the text of the speech is, one really must watch the video to experience the full affect. Thankfully, the full thing is available in three parts: here, here, and here.

According to the Associated Press, only a few senators were in the chamber when Byrd made his over-the-top address condemning dog fighting, but Byrd did manage to startle a couple of dozen tourists when he shouted, “Barbaric! Barbaric!” over and over again.

Here is one final Byrd quote concerning dog fighting, this time evoking the wrath of Almighty God:

God made man caretaker of the earth. God gave man the responsibility of tending to the natural world with dominion over animal life. We honor God when we treat all of His creatures responsibly and with decency and respect. The Book of Proverbs in the Holy Bible tells us: “a righteous man regardeth the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel” [Proverbs 12:10]. The immortal Dante tells us the Divine Justice reserves special places in Hell for certain categories of sinners. Madam president, I am confident — madam president, I am confident that the hottest places in Hell are reserved for the souls of sick and brutal people who hold God’s creatures in such brutal and cruel contempt!

Ouch. If anyone isn’t convinced that Robert Byrd is passionate about dogs, that person hasn’t been paying attention.

As an animal-lover myself, I can certainly sympathize with the intense emotions expressed by Senator Byrd and even the steps being taken by Senator Kerry (although — to be honest — I am not fully convinced that Kerry’s reaction isn’t just a bit of political grandstanding). Dog fighting is a cruel practice, and it is hard for any moral person to justify its existence.

Senator Byrd’s use of Scripture was quite appropriate; righteous people do care for their animals. But even more so, righteous people should care about other people, and that is what has troubled me about all the attention this issue of dog fighting is receiving. Sure, animal cruelty is wrong — most seem to agree on that — but how much more sinful is the cruelty which is directed at human beings?

In his letter to the NFL commissioner, John Kerry stated, “Dogfighting is one of society’s most barbaric and inhumane activities.” That may be, but off the top of my head, I can think of one activity even more barbaric and inhumane: abortion.

Every day, thousands of human children are denied their right to live simply because their parents do not want to assume the responsibility of caring for them. That is what abortion is: the sanctioned execution of children who are not wanted by their mothers and fathers. Could anything be considered more barbaric?

I have written before about how God values the lives of people much more than the lives of dogs. While the Creator loves all that He has made, human beings hold a special place in His heart. It is men — not dogs — that the Lord made in His own image. It is men — not dogs — to whom He gave dominion over all the rest of creation. And it was for men — not dogs — that He gave His only Son to die a painful death so that they could be reconciled to Him.

When I heard Robert Byrd refer to those involved in dog fighting as deserving “the hottest places in Hell,” I thought, He just doesn’t get it. Here is a man who gave a lengthy diatribe declaring that mistreating dogs is a sin but at the same time, supports a woman’s so-called “right” to kill a baby who inhabits her uterus. The contradiction between the two is startling.

It ought to be clear to everyone that the barbarism of abortion far outweighs that of dog fighting, and it truly saddens me to see lawmakers getting so worked up over animal cruelty while turning a blind eye to the human cruelty that is permitted each day in this country and all around the world. What are we to think of these politicians who are so intent on protecting the lives and well-being of canines and yet refuse to do the same for people?

Cindy Sheehan in Montgomery

2007-07-13T17:11:00.001-05:00

I pondered whether I should mention this at all, but it is a piece of interesting local news. The left’s most infamous anti-war protester made a trip to my town yesterday, and she didn’t receive the warmest of welcomes.

Here is the scoop from WSFA, a local news station:

Thursday was anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan’s first ever visit to the city of Montgomery, and it probably won’t be a day she’ll forget for a while.
Sheehan came to Montgomery as a part of her “Summer of Love 2007” protest tour. She had just finished her news conference with local media when an Alabama man confronted Sheehan on her views of the war in Iraq.
The confrontation was caught on video and aired by WSFA 12 News. In the video, you can see a man identified as Chris Vucovich and Sheehan face to face yelling about the war.
[…]
After the gathering the state capitol, Sheehan appeared on national television on CNBC for an interview about her expected announcement soon that she’ll run for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s seat. She later attended an anti-war rally in Old Cloverdale [a historic neighborhood in Montgomery].

The fight between loony liberal Cindy Sheehan and Republican Chris Vucovich is kind of entertaining to watch, in a voyeuristic sort of way (the video is available here; the confrontation is about halfway through the clip, following Ms. Sheehan’s news conference). Cindy walked right up to the man, and the two yelled at one another despite standing only inches apart.

Like most heated arguments, a lot of it was juvenile, but Vucovich did ask a couple of good questions which deserved intelligent responses: “What happens in Iraq after we leave?” and “So Saddam Hussein would be better?”. Too bad that the best Sheehan could muster was her increasingly trite lie, “George Bush has killed 700,000 Iraqis.”

Decrying the evils of George W. Bush was how Ms. Sheehan spent most of her time in Alabama’s capital, but she also took some swipes at a fellow defeatist, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Cindy Sheehan arrived surrounded in Old Cloverdale by supporters. They called on President Bush to step down and pull U.S. troops out of Iraq. “More than 3600 families in this family that will never be able to get on with our lives,” she said to the crowd.
The peace activist also took aim at another top politician. Sheehan says she’ll run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, if Pelosi doesn’t begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush by July 23rd. “She has ten days to put impeachment back on the table or I will run against her,” says Sheehan.
[…]
Sheehan will announce July 23rd if she’ll run as an independent against Speaker Pelosi. That’s when she wraps up her 17 city summer of love peace movement in Washington D.C. Montgomery was the third stop on Sheehan’s tour. Her next stop is Fort Benning, Georgia.

I really would like seeing Cindy Sheehan run against Nancy Pelosi for the entertainment value alone. With two extremely liberal women fighting over a congressional seat for one of the most morally depraved districts in the country (California’s eighth), the result of the election would matter very little. What it would do however is cast a national spotlight on how crazy the far left in this country has become, and I gladly welcome that.

The Amazing Wimbledon Men’s Final

2007-07-09T09:15:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I watched one of the best tennis final ever. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, the first- and second-ranked tennis players in the world, respectively, played a truly magnificent five-set final at the Championships, Wimbledon. The two tennis stars, who comprise the best rivalry in sports today, played a grueling match which lasted three hours and forty-five minutes, making it one of the longest men’s singles finals of all time. In the end, Federer emerged victorious, defeating his younger rival 7–6 (7), 4–6, 7–6 (3), 2–6, 6–2.

I must say that Nadal was at the top of his game, but unfortunately, it was not enough to overcome the tennis titan that is Roger Federer. Still, it was the best that I have ever seen Nadal play against Federer on grass. There were moments during the match in which the Swiss champion seemed genuinely flustered as his Spanish opponent hit one unbelievable shot after another. Nadal has really improved since last year’s Wimbledon final, when Federer beat him with considerably less effort in four sets: 6–0 7–6(5) 6–7(2) 6–3.

Nadal is by far the best clay-court player in the sport today (and possibly, of all time). The three-time French Open champion has taken down Federer in the final for the past two years. But on the grass courts of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Federer has reigned supreme for five long years. Although there are many good grass-court players, none have given the World No. 1 much of a challenge at all — until yesterday. In fact, yesterday’s final was the first time that Federer had played a fifth set at Wimbledon since 2001. Nadal has proven that he is a worthy challenger of Federer on any playing surface, and he has what it takes to be a Wimbledon champion in future years.

But, in the meantime, Federer continues to dominate at the All England Club. With his win over Nadal, Federer has now won the singles title at Wimbledon for five straight years, tying the streak of Swedish player Björn Borg from 1976 to 1980. Borg was at the final yesterday, and it was nice to see the former former World No. 1 congratulate the current one for matching his feat. (An interesting note: in 2001, Pete Sampras was very close to matching Borg’s five consecutive Wimbledon titles himself. Alas, the four-time defending champion was knocked out of the tournament in the fourth round by a nineteen-year-old named Roger Federer.)

In addition to being his fifth Wimbledon title, it is also Federer’s eleventh grand slam title, tying him with legends Björn Borg and Rod Laver for third place in most grand slam titles overall. With just one more, he will surpass Roy Emerson’s twelve titles, and that is likely to happen at the U.S. Open in September. Then the only remaining obstacle will be Pete Sampras’s fourteen grand slam titles, and Federer could match or break that record as soon as next year.

Many commentators are already calling Roger Federer the greatest tennis player of all time — and with good reason. He is an amazing player, not only due to his large number of titles or the many records that he holds but also because of his style of play. Although I must admit that his constant tournament wins are becoming somewhat monotonous and boring to me, I never grow tired of actually watching him play.

Federer and Nadal are two incredibly skilled athletes, and it is wonderful getting to see them make the best use of their God-given talents. In a sport which is notorious for causing devastating injuries due to the stress that it puts on one’s body, they are also blessed that neither one has suffered any injuries serious enough to prevent them from competing. I hope that both Federer and Nadal stay in good health in the years to come so that we fans can continue to enjoy watching the two of them play each other.

Do Global Warming Alarmists Hate Human Beings?

2007-07-07T22:14:00.000-05:00

The title of this post is the thought that went through my head as I read this piece over at The Huffington Post. In it, the author James Boyce claims that the “carbon critics,” those who dare to be critical of the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that were created by the Live Earth concerts (which were organized for the sole purpose of raising awareness of the issue of climate change, allegedly caused by increased levels of — you guessed it — CO₂), are actually proving former Vice President Al Gore’s point that the carbon emissions of people are causing global warming, which — according to Gore and his followers — is wreaking havoc on our lovely planet.

I am not too concerned with the premise of Boyce’s post. What Mr. Boyce seems to fail to realize is that most of the so-called carbon critics are not really concerned with Live Earth’s CO₂ emissions at all because those critics do not seriously believe that anthropogenic global warming is real and therefore do not consider the carbon emissions themselves to be important. What they are bringing attention to is the obvious hypocrisy in throwing carbon-emitting concerts in order to tell others how bad carbon emissions are. Even worse, a lot of the performers involved are emitting tremendously more CO₂ than is necessary to throw the concerts themselves by flying to the events via private jets. The fact that many of the celebrities are not even living by the standard which they expect others to follow is a legitimate point to report and criticize.

In addition to Boyce’s unjustified attack on Live Earth critics, the premise of the post itself is simply flawed. There is no way that critics could prove Gore’s allegations about climate change because he has yet to prove those allegations himself. Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth may have won an Academy Award, but that doesn’t make it good science or validate its claims in any way.

Boyce states that the Live Earth concert in New Jersey will produce carbon dioxide “just like every Giants and Jets game” and that the train Al Gore rode today will continue to emit CO₂ tomorrow and each day after “just like every train in the world.” Those statements are true, but they don’t prove anything. The problem is that Boyce is presupposing that all of Gore’s global warming claims are the gospel truth, and therefore, do not require defending. That makes Boyce’s argument nonsensical because not everyone believes in Gore’s theory that mankind’s carbon emissions are destroying the world.

James Boyce’s post only makes sense if he intended “carbon critics” to refer only to critics who happen to subscribe to the climate change paranoia. If that is the case, perhaps he is implying that those who dissent from the “consensus” view of global warming are so negligible that it is not even worth mentioning that they exist.

But what really startled me and prompted me to write this response is the following statement by Boyce: “The issue is that too many people living on the planet produce too much carbon dioxide when they go about their daily activities. … Our collective presence on a planet, all four billion plus of us, is simply too many people and when too many people drive too many cars, live too many lives, the earth is suffering.” Putting aside the fact that Mr. Boyce got the world’s population wrong by over two and a half billion people, the assertion he makes is troubling.

“Too many people”? It’s bad enough that the global warming alarmists are claiming that human beings are to blame for detrimental changes to the earth’s climate, but now they are also saying that there are too many of us! I thought that the myth of overpopulation went out of fashion years ago. And yet, here it is, right in the midst of the writings of an Al Gore groupie.

Actually, it makes sense. Al Gore has been vocal about the “threat” of overpopulation for years — perhaps as long as he has been about global warming. As Vice President, he even proposed that people in developing countries be encouraged to have abortions in order to curb the upward trend of the world’s population.

So I ask the question: do Al Gore and his followers hate human beings? Perhaps hate is too strong a word, but it seems to rather clear that the alarmists resent there being so many people who are living, breathing, and producing carbon dioxide. Seemingly living in constant fear that all of us planetary parasites are going to ruin everything, they appear to care much more about this chunk of rock called Planet Earth than they do about its inhabitants. And that is really sad.

Don’t get me wrong. I love this world on which God has placed me, and I believe strongly that we need to be good stewards of it. But people are far more precious than planets, and that is what Gore is his adoring fans like James Boyce fail to grasp.

Since Al Gore is a Baptist (more or less), here is a Biblical illustration. As God created the world, he said that each part of it was good: the land, the seas, the plants, the animals, etc. But as soon as God made man, suddenly everything was very good. The lesson: earth just isn’t as good without the people who dwell on it. I pray that some day Gore and his followers realize that.

That Grand Old Fifty-Star Flag

2007-07-05T15:14:00.000-05:00

Today is a significant day in the history of the flag of the United States of America. As of today (July 5), the fifty-star flag is now the longest flying American flag. It has now surpassed the forty-eight-star flag, which flew from 1912 (after both New Mexico and Arizona gained statehood) to 1959, a total of forty-seven years.

Anytime a new state is admitted to the Union (which has not happened since 1959 when Hawaii joined), the star for that state is not officially added to the flag until the following Independence Day, as outlined by the Flag Act of 1818. That makes the Fourth of July the anniversary not only of this nation’s declaration of independence from Great Britain (and hence its birthday) but also of the current flag’s adoption.

The enaction of the Flag Act in 1818 has made for some short-lived star-spangled banners. American flags that flew over the nation for only one year’s time include those with twenty stars (1818–1819), twenty-one (1819–1820), twenty-five (1836–1837), twenty-seven 1845–1846), twenty-eight (1846–1847), twenty-nine (1847–1848), thirty-two (1858–1859), and forty-three (1890–1891) (Star counts and dates in use were taken from Wikipedia).

In fact, few Americans today realize that the U.S. had a forty-nine-star flag, which was the official Stars and Stripes between the Independence Day of 1959 and that of 1960. Even though Alaska and Hawaii both gained acceptance into the Union in 1959, Alaska was admitted in January and Hawaii became the fiftieth state in August, a month and a half after “Old Glory” added its forty-ninth star on July 4.

Like most living Americans, the fifty-star flag is the only one I have ever personally known. And unless Puerto Rico ever becomes a state (which would add a rather odd fifty-first star to the banner), it is likely to be the only American flag that future generations know as well.

Proud to Be an American

2007-07-04T06:47:00.000-05:00

There’s something special about being an American. While there are without a doubt many wonderful places to live around the globe, there is no country as great as the United States of America. I feel that way year-round, but I can’t help express some extra exuberant pride for the U.S.A. during the patriotic celebrations around Independence Day.

A lot of times people who are citizens of other nations interpret American pride as hubris or a sense of superiority. While that may be true of a few the foolish, I don’t for a moment believe that is the case with the majority of Americans. I think that most feel truly blessed to live in a land where democracy and personal freedoms are cherished. For me personally, I am humbled that God has granted me the opportunity to be a citizen of such a wonderful country.

Am I biased? Of course. Merely being born in the United States has given me a fondness for the country because it is my home. But the feeling of pride goes beyond sentimentality, and it is not limited to native-born citizens. That is why over a million immigrants (whether legal or not) flood into the U.S. every year. They see that this country is a special place, and they want to be a part of it.

The United States is not perfect — far from it, in fact. But while my more liberal brethren constantly proclaim to the world how imperfect we are, I think it is important that people view this nation as a whole instead of focusing only on the flaws. By taking an objective look, anyone can see that there is considerably more to cherish about the United States than there is to disdain.

Certainly, there are still injustices in this country, and we should work together to put an end to them. But as we continually strive to become “a more perfect union,” we should also be thankful that our Founding Fathers got so much right from the beginning, including recognizing our fundamental, God-given rights such as life, liberty and property.

Yes, I am proud to be an American. No country has ever done more for the world than the United States of America. No country has ever given up more to spread freedom. And no country has ever fought so hard to secure the rights of its own people. The land of the free and the home of the brave — I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Obama and the Hijacking of Religion

2007-07-02T20:55:00.001-05:00

Having heard the media reports of the controversial statement that Senator Barack Obama made about the Christian Right in a speech given a little over a week ago, I decided to track down the actual text of the speech so that I could know exactly what was said and in what context. As I read the transcript of the remarks which Senator Barack Obama delivered at the national convention of his denomination, the very liberal United Church of Christ, I found that I agreed with much of what he had to say. It is very similar to a keynote address that he gave about a year ago at a “Call to Renewal” conference — in some places, word for word. Together, the two speeches make for fascinating reading and revealed to me a lot about Obama’s religious beliefs.

Barack Obama is man of devout Christian faith; there is no doubt about that in my mind. For all my differences with the Presidential candidate on social issues, I cannot deny that his dedication to Jesus Christ is genuine. Still, it is amazing to me that the man can be so right about some issues of faith and yet so incredibly wrong about others. I guess that is true for a lot of people — maybe even myself. I am certainly not one to profess that I have everything concerning faith and Scripture figured out, but it seems to me that if you are going to give any credence at all to the authority of the Bible, there are some very basic truths which you must accept — like, for example, that all human lives are valuable and worth protecting, including those in utero.

Anyway, like I said, Obama’s speech was fascinating to me, and it probably deserves a detailed analysis. Regrettably, I just don’t have the time or the desire to do so right now; perhaps I will save that for some day when I have nothing more pressing to do (my code phrase for something I’ll likely never get done). Instead, I would like to comment on the most controversial part of the speech and the only part on which most news organizations reported — where Senator Obama stated that the Religious Right in the United States is hijacking the Christian faith.

To be completely fair to the senator, here is exactly what he said during his remarks:

Doing the Lord’s work is a thread that’s run through our politics since the very beginning. And it puts the lie to the notion that the separation of church and state in America means faith should have no role in public life. Imagine Lincoln’s Second Inaugural without its reference to “the judgments of the Lord.” Or King’s “I Have a Dream” speech without its reference to “all of God’s children.” Or President Kennedy’s Inaugural without the words, “here on Earth, God’s work must truly be our own.” At each of these junctures, by summoning a higher truth and embracing a universal faith, our leaders inspired ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things.
But somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked. Part of it’s because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, who’ve been all too eager to exploit what divides us. At every opportunity, they’ve told evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design. There was even a time when the Christian Coalition determined that its number one legislative priority was tax cuts for the rich. I don’t know what Bible they’re reading, but it doesn’t jibe with my version.

Putting aside the egregious falsehood that the Christian Coalition’s “number one legislative priority” at one point was to land tax cuts for rich people (the CCA has lobbied to make permanent President Bush’s federal tax cuts, which affected all tax brackets), the two paragraphs quoted above are contradictory in spirit.

In the first one, Obama talks about faith having a place in politics, and he makes reference to the religious utterances of Lincoln, King, and Kennedy. He then states that a faith in God has allowed people in the public square “to achieve extraordinary things.” His words are meant to inspire his audience of mostly liberal Christians to use their faith to make the world a better place by tackling big issues like poverty and genocide. Those are worthy goals, and I applaud Obama for his efforts at inciting people to faith-based action to correct society’s ills.

But in the very next paragraph, the senator harshly criticizes conservative Christians for doing just that — using their faith as a basis for enacting social reforms. Apparently, in Barack Obama’s own mind, political action on the part of Christians is welcome when it comes to his own pet issues, but when Christians who differ with him on social issues get involved in the political process, then it is “exploit[ing] what divides us.” The hypocrisy is startling.

To top it off, Obama’s characterization of the Christian Right is totally off base. By using the term hijacked, the senator is implying that religious conservatives are exploiting Christianity for their own selfish agendas instead of what I personally have found to be almost universally true among politically-conscious Christian conservatives — that their faith inspires them to stand firmly against all attempts to change the culture by making immoral practices acceptable.

The ultimate irony is that by encouraging Christian liberals to be politically active while at the same time denigrating the political actions of Christian conservatives and distorting the truth of what they hope to accomplish, Barack Obama is doing more to “hijack” the Christian religion than conservatives ever have.

I’m Back

2007-07-02T08:11:00.002-05:00

Following a relaxing vacation which provided me with plenty of downtime, I am now getting back into my regular routine. Among other things, that includes blogging. Regrettably, keeping my weblog updated had fallen to the wayside even before taking some much-needed time off.

For the past couple of months, my posts have been rather sporadic. This is due primarily to the fact that a lot has been going on both at work and home, and, of course, those matters take precedent over blogging. But honestly, my lack of updates is also partially due to the reality that I just simply haven’t felt like writing much. As much as I enjoy maintaining this site, blogging fatigue has slowly crept in, and in recent weeks, I have found the process of writing to be much more laborious and joyless than it ought to be.

However, now that I have returned from vacation, I feel quite replenished and intend on posting again on a semi-frequent basis. Hopefully, my newly-rediscovered energy will help me finish and publish all of the half-baked drafts which are sitting in my Blogger account.

In the meantime, I encourage anyone who is interested in my thoughts to take a look at my link blog over at WordPress.com. I haven’t publicized it much here (except for displaying the post titles under the “Items of Interest” section in the right pane of this website), but I’ve been running the link blog since January.

The idea of starting a brand new blog on WordPress evolved out my existing link blog which I was running using Google Reader. Although I was mostly satisfied with that setup, I found myself wanting to include brief comments of my own to the stories to which I was linking, but Google Reader does not permit that. So I decided to begin a new blog called “Links of Interest” and use WordPress to run it since I had been wanting to get more familiar with the widely-popular, open-source CMS anyway.

The posts at this new weblog consist of links to other websites with usually just a paragraph or two of my own thoughts. The benefit of this setup is that because the entries are much smaller than the ones here, it is much easier to post on a frequent basis. It also allows me to quickly comment on events even when I don’t have time to write a “full” blog post.

As of right now, my intention is to update my main blog a few times a week with longer, more thoughtful posts and update my link blog on a nearly-daily basis with my quick impressions on stories that I think are interesting. At least, that’s the plan until my next inevitable bout of blogging fatigue strikes.

Television and Liberalism

2007-06-22T20:21:00.001-05:00

Can watching excessive amounts of television cause a person to become more politically liberal in their views? A new study from the Culture and Media Institute seems to indicate so.

Michael Medved has the details:

The study, conducted by the respected polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates in December, 2006, drew responses from more than 2000 Americans aged 18 and above. This investigation classified “heavy” TV viewers as those who devoted four hours (or more) per evening to watching the tube — and found 25% of the public fit that description. “Light” TV viewers (22.5% of the sample) were those who watched one hour per night or less. In other words, the self-described “heavy” viewers consumed, on average, more than four times the amount of nightly television as the self-consciously “light” viewers.
These starkly contrasting TV habits linked directly to dramatic differences in the two groups in terms of both attitudes and actions.
For instance, heavy TV viewers proved far more likely to agree with the statement “the government needs to get bigger” than were light viewers (26% to 12%). They were also more likely to endorse the idea that “government should be responsible for providing retirement benefits for everyone” (64% to 43%), much more likely to declare themselves “pro choice” on abortion (57% to 43%), more likely to back “a government run health system” (63% to 43%), and much less likely to attend church “at least weekly” (28% to 47%).
In fact, a range of significant real world behaviors connect in striking manner to the amount of television we consume. For instance, among those who commit four hours a night (or more) to the idiot box, a stunning 56% say they never volunteer time to “causes and charities”; only 27% of light viewers (one hour a night or less) make the same statement. When it comes to writing checks, there’s a similar disparity: 24% of heavy viewers give no charity at all, but only 11% of light TV viewers shun their charitable responsibilities.

So it appears that there is a clear connection between the amount of television that a person watches and the likelihood that he will profess liberal beliefs, but why is this the case? Medved outlines three possible explanations:

Watching lots of television leaves little time for developing real relationships, and the loneliness resulting from that can result in people turning to the government for solace and help — a liberal trait.

First, and most obviously, the heavy television watcher gives so much attention to the tube (a minimum of 28 hours per week, remember) that he’ll find scant time to spare for real-world relationships. Any individual who commits the bulk of his waking, non-working hours to his TV set will find it difficult to take part in the “little platoons of society” (family and neighborhood associations) that Edmund Burke cites as essential to liberty and conservatism.
[…]
People who see themselves as alone in the world, with no network of spouses or fellow congregants, frequently turn to government as a source of support and comfort — just as they’d turn to television as a source of phony companionship. It makes sense that loneliness and helplessness and disconnection would breed both liberalism and heavy TV viewing; just as a vibrant family life, and communal participation, would produce less television and more conservative self-reliance.
Television news and televised entertainment both contribute to a sense that we live in a dark, dysfunctional, alarming world — and that perception reinforces the core concepts of liberalism. The left depends on a gloomy vision of the present and future — how else could its adherents demand sweeping, ambitious government initiatives to redistribute wealth, stop global warming, rescue the poor, repeal racism and homophobia, restructure health care, and so forth?.

The abundance of unwholesome content on television can lead to the idea that the real world is like that and can spur a desire for radical government-led actions to be taken to change it — another liberal trait.

By the same token, television demands constant reminders of bad news and conflict. News broadcasts (“If it bleeds, it leads”) rely on violence, crime, natural disasters, scary prospects, horrifying epidemics, economic setbacks, and ecological terrors. Reassuring realities – about the steady progress for rich and poor alike, in every corner of the globe – never make it to TV reports, nor do wholesome, ordinary, functional families command much attention in media entertainments.
The great TV critic Leo Tolstoy began “Anna Karenina” with the wise, unforgettable declaration: “All happy families are the same, but unhappy families are different in dramatic and compelling ways.” In other words, novels and sitcoms, movies and reality shows, seldom focus on normal, productive, stable, loving family units where the members obey the law, love their country and pay their taxes. Instead, the 28 hours a week (minimum) viewed by heavy TV watchers amounts to 28 hours a week of weirdness.

Most television shows rarely provoke deep thinking, so people who spend vast amounts of time watching TV are not intellectually challenged and are more likely to be swayed by emotionalism than rational thought — yet another liberal trait.

By its very nature, TV (like all other visual media) relies on image rather than ideas, superficiality rather than substance. Television connects and communicates by stirring the emotions, not by offering profound thoughts or probing analysis. Immediacy represents the medium’s principal virtue: TV broadcasts can put you “right there,” experiencing dramatic events in the very moments that they unfold, but they never do well at giving a sense of context or continuity.
With Hurricane Katrina, for instance, televised reports offered a powerful sense of devastation and suffering, while suggesting that President Bush in some way caused every imaginable misfortune. The riveting coverage, however, could hardly convey the truth that the long-term Democratic establishment in New Orleans and Baton Rouge actually bore primary responsibility for the lack of adequate emergency preparations, and hardly addressed the Big Easy’s pre-hurricane status as the most impoverished city in the country.
The television emphasis on immediacy and impatience (when people get bored they quickly change the channel) feeds the nation’s most destructive epidemic: the dreaded “Do Something Disease”: the conviction that every problem demands immediate activism in order to make us feel better, regardless of whether the gestures in question actually provide a long-term improvement in the situation.
Liberalism cherishes such meaningless feel-good notions. The Democrats feel outraged at the rise in gas prices, so they demand a satisfying and vindictive “wind-fall profits tax” on the greedy oil companies — never mind the fact that raising taxes on an industry always makes the prices of its product go up, not down. The nation feels disgusted and outraged at the brutal death of Matthew Shepard, so the liberals demand new “hate crimes” legislation — regardless of the reality that it’s already against the law to rob any victim (gay or straight) and to beat him to death, and that the gay student’s two killers are already serving two consecutive life sentences (each) for his murder.

Of course, there is also a fourth possibility: the pervasiveness of liberal bias in the mainstream media.

In describing the common ground between the TV medium and the liberal world-view, I haven’t once cited the long-standing (and highly credible) charges of leftist media bias. The provocative new study from the Culture and Media Institute doesn’t examine what the respondents choose to watch, but rather measures the overall extent of their TV viewing, regardless of content. Perhaps some of the heavy viewers spend all four hours per night riveted by The History Channel, or Discovery, or PBS (fat chance).
For the purposes of this study, and for my analysis, it doesn’t matter how tasteful or admirable the viewing selections: four hours (or more) per night will bring the same doleful impact — leading to more isolation and less durable and significant real world relationships, a more dire perspective on the world around us along with a corresponding sense of desperation and powerlessness, and a superficial, impatient, emotional emphasis on immediacy and feeling, rather than context and consequence.
In other words, the problem with heavy television viewing isn’t the low quality of what we watch (though God knows the quality is low) but rather the high quantity. That means that the most important response to the study at hand (especially for those who want to raise their children free of the taint of liberal pathologies) isn’t to push for supply side solutions from mass media, but to deploy demand solutions for every American family.
We may remain unable to impact what the TV industry makes, but we can certainly change what each of us takes — and resolve to count ourselves among the connected, clear thinking light viewers, rather than the addled, lonely, and dysfunctional heavy consumers of the pop culture’s principal form of mindless and misleading diversion.

Michael Medved makes an excellent point; we are in total control over what we watch. That is why we need to make sure that we make wise decisions in the area our TV viewing.

There is a relevant saying in the computer industry: “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” While that aphorism usually refers to bad data input, it also applicable to television. If people fill their heads with the garbage of reality TV, soap operas, MTV, and Keith Olbermann, we should hardly be surprised that they are far more prone to turn into government-dependent, emotion-driven activists of liberal causes.

Choosing to watch positive, wholesome shows on television is a good start, but we also need to set personal limits on our TV time. Instead of spending all evening on the sofa watching the tube, how about going for a walk, reading a good book, spending time with family, helping a friend in need, or volunteering some time in the community? Healthy activities like those can curb the tendency to move toward liberalism and also be a fulfilling experience for oneself and others.

Bush’s Third Veto

2007-06-20T18:58:00.000-05:00

As expected, President George W. Bush issued the third veto of his Presidency today, and it was for the same reason that he gave his first veto nearly a year ago: to prevent Congress from allowing federal funds to go toward research on embryonic stem cells. This is an issue on which the President has been steadfast throughout his two terms in office, and that has angered Democrats and Republicans alike.

The rhetoric from the Democratic supporters of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007 is unsurprising:

“What [Bush] offered today was just toothless. What we really need is leadership on this issue,” freshman congressman Tim Mahoney (D–FL) stated flatly.
“President Bush remains stubbornly defiant by once again vetoing potentially life-saving legislation that would give millions of patients and their families hope,” asserted Diana DeGette (D–CO), a co-sponsor of the bill in the House of Representatives. “Congress gave President Bush another opportunity to do the right thing, but once again he put politics before science,” she blasted.
Senator John Kerry (D–MA) remarked that the bill was “one of the most important pieces of legislation of the year” and Bush’s veto “speaks volumes about his view of science, research. and the need to help the millions of people who are suffering from debilitating disease.”

Even Republicans got in on the act of bashing the President’s veto, albeit less hatefully:

Senator Orrin Hatch (R–UT) predicted, “Support continues to grow – both in Congress and in the public – and it’s only a matter of time before the federal government gets fully behind this research.”
“This is not a matter of pro-life versus pro-choice, but rather, it is a matter of man and womankind versus disease,” deceived congressman Christopher Shays (R–CT). “I believe history will not look kindly on the president’s actions.”
Representative Charlie Dent (R–PA) made an extremely odd statement. “I understand his concerns about crossing ethical boundaries in our medical research. But this legislation does not cross that boundary, and in fact would create for the first time a set of ethical guidelines for stem cell research.” Huh?

But my favorite reaction to the veto news came from Senator Dianne Feinstein (D–CA):

My heart sank when I learned that once again, President Bush has vetoed legislation to increase federal funding for stem cell research.
This essential bill would set free our nation’s scientists from the President’s failed stem cell policy. It would allow them to have immediate access to the most promising stem cell lines, no matter when the lines were created – all within the parameters of strict ethical guidelines.
A majority of the Senate wants this bill to become law. A majority of the House wants this bill to become law. A majority of the American people want this bill to become law.
I am profoundly disappointed that this President has once again stood in the face of overwhelming public support to deny the hope of millions of Americans who are suffering from debilitating diseases.
So, my colleagues and I will continue to fight the fight until this bill is finally signed into law. The millions of Americans who have already waited too long deserve nothing less.

This heartless, anti-science President who — against the wishes of every caring human being — has rejected a bill that would bring life and happiness to sick people all over the world — it almost makes you want to cry, doesn’t it? Yeah, right.

I have written before about why embryonic stem cell research is wrong, and I don’t care to reiterate that today. Instead, I will just say that I am so glad that for these past six years, this country has had a President who affirms the value of all living human beings, including those who have no way of defending themselves. I fear that the next President of the United States — whether Democrat or Republican — will not be so compassionate toward the plight of the unborn.

The Things We Thought We Knew

2007-06-18T20:58:00.000-05:00

We human beings think we know so much, but time after time, we find out that what we thought we knew was dead wrong.

Take, for example, the minor planet Pluto. From the time of its discovery in 1930 Pluto has been considered the ninth planet of our solar system. It was, that is, until last year when the International Astronomical Union formally defined the term planet as a celestial body which orbits the sun and has cleared the space surrounding its orbit. That knocked Pluto, which sits within a sea of other celestial objects called the Kuiper belt, out of the planet category and placed it in a new classification call “dwarf planets.”

Since then, Pluto was believed by many to be the largest of the dwarf Planets. But now, we learn for certain that it is really in second place. Eris, formerly known as 2003 UB₃₁₃, has been thought to be bigger than Pluto for a couple of years. The latest research by American astronomers proves that to be true. In fact, their analysis of the two dwarf planets shows the mass of Eris to be twenty-seven percent greater than that of Pluto — a considerable difference. So, within a short span of time, Pluto has gone from being in the same league as planets like Jupiter, Saturn, and even Earth to being a dwarf planet which is itself dwarfed by at least one other body in the same classification.

Here is another example: the ancient river Nile, which has flowed through Africa for millennia, has generally been thought to be the longest river in the entire world, but that may not be true. The Amazon of South America, which is the world’s largest river by volume, is at the very least a close second in length, and researchers in Brazil believe that they have proven definitively that the Amazon is the longest by over a hundred kilometers. Their claim is the result of an expedition to Peru in which the scientists say they have discovered a new source for the Amazon in the south of the country instead of the north of the country, which has been thought to be the river’s starting point for years. If the Amazon is confirmed to begin farther south than previously thought, it would indeed be the longest river in the world, and as in the case of Pluto, that fact will need to be noted in new editions of thousands of textbooks.

What is my point in all this? It’s simple: we don’t know nearly as much as we think we do. Although this may be difficult for a lot of humanists to admit, man’s knowledge is very obviously fallible. And if it is so easy for what we think is true to change from one year to the next, then man’s knowledge cannot be trusted as the foundation on which a person bases his beliefs.

Christians realize this, and that is why those who are true to their faith recognize God as the ultimate source of truth and rely on His words — written down in the Bible — as the basis of their lives. To do otherwise is to reject the bedrock of the Bible and substitute the shifting sands of human knowledge which inevitably will — like the parable says — lead to destruction.

Blogger in Draft

2007-06-14T20:37:00.000-05:00

I have been using Blogger as my content management system for this weblog since I started it back in 2005. During that time, I have had a love/hate relationship with the service. While I enjoy using Blogger for the most part and find it is very flexible in allowing me to run my site the way I want to, the service has presented me with a handful of frustrating experiences over the nearly two years I have used it (I have blogged about a few of those frustrations, such as here, here, and here).

But now, the Blogger team has come up with something which I can’t really complain about (yet). They have launched Blogger in Draft, a new version of the software intended specifically for testing out new features.

Here is what the they say about this new testing environment:

Blogger in draft is a special version of Blogger where we try out new features before releasing them to everyone. Think of it as our sandbox, or laboratory, or just “Blogger + new things.” By taking your feedback and looking at what works and what doesn’t, we’ll be able to make features that much better when releasing them to everyone.

How can I use Blogger in draft? How can I stop using Blogger in draft?
To try out Blogger in draft, just go to http://draft.blogger.com/ and log in. If you want to stop using it and go back to “normal” Blogger, simply log in to http://www.blogger.com/ instead. Your blogs and posts are the same regardless of whether you use Blogger in draft or regular Blogger. The only difference is what you see in the interface.

What do I get on Blogger in draft?
Access to new features, functionality, and interfaces we’re trying out. To see what’s currently available on Blogger in draft, read the blog at http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/.

The first new feature available to Blogger in Draft users is video uploading. By clicking a button located in the post editor, video bloggers can upload their clips with ease. According the FAQ on the new feature, the uploaded videos are hosted on Google Video (not YouTube), and — unlike photos — there is no storage quota (which doesn’t make much sense to me; why have a limit on the number of photos a user can store but not on videos, which take up far more space?).

Since this blog has always been mainly about the written word, video uploading doesn’t excite me too much, but I do look forward to seeing what other enhancements the Blogger team comes up with. In the past, most of the new additions to Blogger have been more about combating spam (Captcha, “Flag As Objectionable” button) or integrating with other Google services (AdSense).

The video upload actually falls in the latter category, but it can also be useful and fun, and Blogger hasn’t done much in the past couple of years that I have used it which could be considered useful or fun. It is no wonder that so many people have left Blogger for other blogging platforms, like WordPress.

I am glad to see the people at Blogger working to improve the service. I hope that they keep it up and make Blogger really significant again with legitimate users, not just spammers.

Update (2007-07-24): Blogger in Draft has introduced a few more neat features like polls, enclosures for podcasts, and (my personal favorite) a search box which uses Google’s Custom Search Engine to search an entire blog plus any pages which are linked to from it.

So far, I am liking what I am seeing as far as Blogger improvements go. I hope they keep it up.

Safari for Windows

2007-06-11T16:23:00.001-05:00

Here’s something I never expected: Apple Inc. has ported Safari, its very own web browser which is included with Mac OS X, to the Windows platform. There is now one more browser in the mix from which Windows users can choose.

From Engadget:

Sign one more up for the browser war, Apple is shipping the third version of its well received Safari WebKit-based browser over to foreign shores to duke it out with the likes of IE, Firefox and Opera… on Windows. The Mac-only browser has already attained a 5% market share, and it seems the Apple folks plan to use it in much the same way they’ve used iTunes to grow the Mac fanbase by giving Windows users “a glass of ice water to somebody in hell!” Apple claims their browser is up to twice as fast as the competition, and the public beta of Safari 3 is being released today as a free download for Mac OS X, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

I have never used Safari, so I have no idea how good of a browser it is. There is absolutely no chance that it could pull me away from my favorite browser, Firefox. But I will likely download it at some point if for no other reason than to test web pages with it. Up until this point, Web developers have had no way of testing their websites with Safari unless they had a Mac; now, that is no longer the case.

It will be interesting to see how much more market share Safari is able to gain now that it is available on the world’s most widely-used operating system. In contrast, Firefox has supported both Mac OS X and Windows from the beginning, as well as Linux. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, only runs natively on one OS, and I bet I don’t have to tell anyone which one that is.

Update (2006-06-13): It appears that Safari on Windows is not as fast as Apple is claiming. Benchmark tests conducted by Wired News indicate that the beta of Safari 3 is “actually slower than both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 when accessing Ajax-intensive web applications.”

Americans’ Thoughts on the Creation/Evolution Debate

2007-06-09T18:05:00.000-05:00

I was pleasantly surprised to see the results of a new USA Today/Gallup poll which shows that creationism still has a strong foothold in the United States.

Here are the two main poll questions:

Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life

	Definitely true	Probably true	Probably false	Definitely false	No opinion	Total true	Total false
2007 Jun 1–3	18	35	16	28	3	53	44

Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years

	Definitely true	Probably true	Probably false	Definitely false	No opinion	Total true	Total false
2007 Jun 1–3	39	27	16	15	3	66	31

For me personally, it was refreshing to see that a significant plurality (39%) of Americans definitely believe that the Bible’s account of creation is true. And despite the fact that evolutionists have had a monopoly on public education for decades, sixty-six percent of Americans are either certain or fairly sure that God created mankind in its present form without the use of evolution. That is rather extraordinary. With the newly-opened Creation Museum receiving lots of media attention, I pray that even more people in this country would accept creation as fact.

Of course, as I have stated before, reality is unaffected by poll numbers. God’s truth is true whether anyone believes it or not. Even if ninety-nine percent of Americans said that Darwinism is true, that doesn’t make it so. Like all theories, evolution is based upon assumptions. Not a single evolutionist was there at the beginning to see life begin. Only one Being was present; He is the Creator, and He has revealed to us the order and length of creation in the book of Genesis.

Christians have long been ridiculed and scorned for believing in God and the Bible. But what really amazes me is how fervently a lot of secularists oppose any positive mention of creationism. For most of them, it isn’t good enough that they simply believe themselves to be right; they want all alternative viewpoints to be suppressed. This can been demonstrated in the controversies around the country (Dover, Pennsylvania, in particular) concerning the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. While ID proponents desire for both intelligent design and evolution be taught in classrooms, evolutionists fiercely oppose a balanced approach. To them, evolution is the one, true way, and all other views are religion-induced fantasies which must be discarded.

As a Bible-believing Christian, I in no way feel threatened by evolution or any other humanistic ideas because I strongly believe that the truth will be revealed to those who seek it honestly. I certainly don’t like the theory of evolution or its dissemination to millions of schoolchildren as fact, but I am confident that God’s truth will ultimately prevail.

Now that I think about it, maybe that is why secularists are so hostile toward Christianity — because deep down they are afraid that the truth will become known to everyone, and evolution will be exposed as a lie. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so amazed at the animosity nonbelievers feel toward creationism after all.

Some Thoughts on the Third Republican Debate

2007-06-07T06:55:00.001-05:00

CNN hosted the third GOP debate on Tuesday in New Hampshire. Unlike the other two Republican debates, I didn’t watch this one. I am beginning to feel like I know who the candidates are and what they stand for, and it doesn’t seem like a good use of my time to spend two hours listening to them say a lot of the same things that they have said over and over. However, I did skim the transcript at The New York Times, and here are some of my thoughts.

To a large degree, the questions in this debate were flat-out boring. Most of the ones posed to specific candidates were just rehashing the positions about which the men were already firmly on the record. For example, Giuliani was asked about abortion, Tancredo was asked about immigration, Romney was asked about “flip-flopping” on issues and his Mormonism, Gilmore was asked about his conservative credentials, Huckabee and Brownback were both asked about moral issues, etc. Reading the transcript, the debate largely gave me a déjà vu vibe. There was very little which felt original.
John McCain did have a great quote about Hillary Clinton saying that the Iraq War is “Bush’s war”: “What Senator Clinton doesn’t understand [is] that presidents don’t lose wars, political parties don’t lose wars; nations lose wars and nations … have the consequences of failure.”
I don’t know if the transcript is wrong or Mike Huckabee misspoke, but he made the statement that the day of the debate (June 5) was Ronald Reagan’s birth date. That is not true; it was actually the three-year anniversary of his death. I caught this immediately because I am very familiar with the date of Reagan’s birth; it is my birthday as well (February 6).
Mike Huckabee was asked about his belief in creation. Although the governor refused to say that the earth was created in six literal days about six thousand years ago (taking the “I don’t know” path), he did clearly proclaim his belief that there is “a God who knows us and loves us and who created us for his own purpose.” I very much agree with that view, but I am still rather perplexed at Huckabee’s confession that he doesn’t know the details of creation. That is somewhat surprising coming from an ordained minister, since the Bible is very straightforward about how God “did it.”
Sam Brownback was also given time to state his view on creation, and his response was very similar to Huckabee’s: “There’s a God of the universe that loves us very much and was involved in the process [of creation]. How he did it, I don’t know.” Once again, I refer any confused Christians to the Bible — and specifically Genesis — for details on how God created the earth. Perhaps, these Presidential hopefuls should plan a visit to the newly-opened Creation Museum while they are out on the campaign trail.
The debate was held on the campus of Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Brownback made reference to Anselm in his comments about creation, saying that “we should engage faith and reason,” like the medieval philosopher did. I found this to be noteworthy merely because just a few days ago, I took an online quiz which supposedly matches you with the Christian theologian whom you are most like in your beliefs (not scientific in any way, but much more beneficial than the Sesame Street Quiz). According to the quiz, the theologian whose views my own parallel the most is none other than Saint Anselm of Canterbury.
Ron Paul was asked a church/state question and responded with a partial quote of the First Amendment: “Congress shall write no law.” Paul then elaborated that “we should write a lot less laws regarding this matter.” I can’t for the life of me figure out what laws he might be referring to. To the best of my knowledge, Congress has not violated the Establishment Clause by either passing a law which concerns “an establishment of religion” or by “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion. The courts on the other hand…
Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are both in favor of an Apollo-like project that — instead of getting us to the moon — will get the nation energy-independent. I like that idea too.
John McCain has a problem with oil companies making “huge” profits. The senator said that the companies need to be reinvesting the money they earn. Besides the obvious fact that we live in a capitalist society and making money should not be condemned, the oil companies actually are reinvesting their profits. In fact, every major oil company in the country spends more money on energy R&D than they earn in profits. Senator McCain ought to know this just as he ought to know that he has no business telling private corporations how to run their business.
I was a little surprised that there seems to be a consensus among all the Republican Presidential candidates that the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is a good one and is working. On the other hand, I was not surprised at all that there is considerable disagreement among the candidates concerning whether or not Scooter Libby should be pardoned.
Tommy Thompson was given extremely few questions compared to the big-name candidates, but the most notable one was in reference to the possibility that Law & Order actor Fred Thompson might run, “Is there a need for another Thompson in this race?” Naturally, the governor had kind words for his fellow Thompson while emphasizing his own conservative record.
Undoubtedly, Governor Thompson’s best response of the night was in describing how Republicans failed to change Washington, and instead, Washington changed them. One of Thompson’s biggest complaints was that the Republicans ceased being fiscal conservatives and began spending taxpayers’ money “as foolishly and as stupidly as the Democrats.” The governor summed it up nicely; if both parties end up being big spenders, the voters will choose the professional spenders (Democrats) over the amateur spenders (Republicans).
Wolf Blitzer, the debate’s moderator, apparently thinks that the Republican Party is not moderate enough. He posed the question, “Shouldn’t the GOP nationally be following that Arnold Schwarzenegger example in California [of ‘bringing in independents and moderates and trying to forge a consensus among Republicans and Democrats’]?” I liked Duncan Hunter’s one-word response: “No.” The candidates then began listing issues which bring in people and unite them, but I think they all missed the main issue, and that is that the Republican Party is the moderate, big-tent party. While the Democratic Party increasingly courts the far-left fringe of their party, it is the Republicans who are, by and large, welcoming of people with differing opinions (although there is always that minority who goes around calling Republicans who disagree with them on certain issues RINOs).
Moderator Wolf Blitzer had an interesting way of notifying the candidates that their speaking time was up. The transcript doesn’t say so, but apparently, there were no buzzers at the end of each speaker’s allotted time. Instead, Mr. Blitzer would simply say, “Thank you,” to indicate that he wanted to move on, and when the candidate continued to talk (as one would expect someone who wants as much time as possible to express his views would do), Wolf would continue to say, “Thank you, thank you” over and over again until the candidate finally finished speaking. I don’t know how it came across on television, but on the written page, Wolf’s continuous interjections made it somewhat difficult to piece together what the candidate was saying.
This debate, like the MSNBC/Politico one, did not give equal time to all. It is hard to gauge the time limits from the transcript, but it seems to me that some candidates were given longer to speak than others. Some were definitely asked more questions than others. With the exception of Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee, the so-called “second-tier” candidates were largely ignored. Out of the now three debate which have taken place, I still think that the Fox News one was the most interesting and fair.
I didn’t watch the CNN debate, but I did catch Fred Thompson on Hannity and Colmes. Sean Hannity’s interview with the former senator and current television star was informative and fun. I now feel like I understand Fred Thompson better than a couple of the declared Presidential candidates who have participated in every one the debates (notably, Tommy Thompson and Jim Gilmore). Perhaps they would be better served by skipping the next debate and going on Fox News instead.

A Former German Chancellor on Global Warming

2007-06-05T22:02:00.000-05:00

The global warming consensus which Al Gore and his environmental groupies have claimed for so long is in danger of being revealed as a gross exaggeration. Prominent climatologists been speaking out for some time about the falsehoods which the alarmists have been propagating, but now many government officials around the world are beginning to come out and decry the hysteria as well.

Back in February, I mentioned on my link blog the views of Czech president Václav Klaus, who stated that global warming is a myth. This past week, NASA administrator Michael Griffin said that global warming is not a problem people should be wrestling with. And now, Helmut Schmidt, the former Chancellor of West Germany, is giving his two cents on climate change.

Here are Schmidt’s views, as reported during the “Political Grapevine” segment of tonight’s Special Report with Brit Hume:

Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt is calling for an end to what he calls global warming hysteria leading up to the G8 summit. “The topic is hysterical, overheated, and that is especially because of the media,” he told a German newspaper.
Schmidt added there has always been climate change on earth — and says the reasons for that have been “inadequately researched for the time being.” And he said that assuming global climate change can be altered by anything done at the G8 summit is — “idiotic.”

Schmidt makes an excellent point: during the short span of history in which temperatures around the world have been able to be recorded, the earth’s climate (as if the planet had just one climate, but this is the way a lot of environmentalists talk) has been shown to vary dramatically. In the 1970s, many people were worried about global cooling. Now the issue of the day is global warming. In the past century, there have been both significant spells of cooler temperatures and significant spells of warmer temperatures at various times around the globe.

Honestly, it is difficult to claim with any certainty that the warmer temperatures of recent years are in any way abnormal for our planet, especially considering that scientists have only been collecting climate data for a very limited amount of the earth’s existence. For all we know, the planet could go through a cycle along which it experiences both periods of cooling and warming. We just don’t know.

I am not saying that we should ignore the concerns of the large fraction of the scientific community which believes we are headed toward a global catastrophe. But I do think that a lot more studying needs to occur before we all panic about the end of the world. It is time for the hysteria to end and for reasoned debate to begin.

A Different Kind of Museum

2007-06-04T20:33:00.001-05:00

A new museum opened up last week, drawing large crowds of visitors to its Petersburg, Kentucky location near the Cincinnati Airport. It is the Creation Museum, and what makes it unique among all other major museums in the United States is clearly evident in the mission statement of Answers in Genesis, the Christian ministry which constructed and runs the museum:

We proclaim the absolute truth and authority of the Bible with boldness.

We relate the relevance of a literal Genesis to the church and the world today with creativity.

We obey God’s call to deliver the message of the Gospel, individually and collectively.

You see, the purpose of the Creation Museum’s existence is to declare the Bible as truth. Inside, the museum tells visitors about the six-day creation, the Garden of Eden, the Fall of Man, the curse of sin, and atonement for that sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It has exhibits showing dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood, and the Tower of Babel.

This is all standard Protestant Christian theology and shouldn’t raise the eyebrows of anyone who is the least bit familiar with Christianity. But here in the twenty-first century, secularists seem to be trying harder than ever to take offense and find fault with the long-held traditional beliefs of Christians.

The Creation Museum’s opening has generated a lot of media attention, and unsurprisingly, a lot of it has been negative. Many media sources have spun the evangelical efforts of AiG and its founder Ken Ham as malicious attempts to deceive people and prevent them from learning “true science.” Others have simply categorized the museum as being strange. Only a few articles that I have read have actually been fair in the coverage. Of all the hostile attacks I have seen directed at the Creation Museum, my favorite has to be from The Washington Post, which quotes National Center for Science Education director Eugenie C. Scott, who calls it “the creationist Disneyland.”

Despite all this enmity coming from those who reject the truth of the Bible, I think that the Creation Museum will be a huge success. Its message is not new, but it is one that is been sorely lacking in the halls of this nation’s natural history museums. The Creation Museum is about more than mere natural history; it is about supernatural history — about a God who created mankind in His own image during a unique one-time event and who has been involved in the lives of men ever since. Instead of telling its visitors that they have no special significance — that humans came into being through millions of years of genetic mutations with no intelligence involved — the Creation Museum speaks of a God who loves mankind and who has given each member a specific purpose in life.

I believe that is a message which many Americans desperately need to hear, and the Creation Museum will do its part to help spread the Word.

The Terrorist Attack Which Didn’t Happen

2007-06-04T07:09:00.000-05:00

A terrorist attack which might have been deadlier than those of 9/11 could have taken place at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. But thanks to the work of the FBI, it didn’t.

The details from Newsday:

The alleged plot to blow up Kennedy Airport’s fuel system, intended to be more destructive and deadly than the Sept. 11 attacks, was driven by a deep-seated hatred of the United States and the West and now spotlights the Caribbean as another region of the world that increasingly poses a terrorism threat.
Authorities said four men, including a former member of the Guyanese parliament as well as a Brooklyn man who was a Kennedy cargo worker, are being charged with conspiring to plant explosives to damage the airport’s jet-fuel supply tanks. The men allegedly also had plans to plant explosives on a 40-mile pipeline that winds its way from a facility in Linden, N.J., through Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens on its way to Kennedy Airport.
The plot, which the men code-named “Chicken Farm,” was foiled “well before it came to fruition,” authorities said yesterday in unveiling the threat. The men had not gotten the explosives or financing needed to carry out their plan.
“The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable,” said U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf at a news conference yesterday. She called it “one of the most chilling plots imaginable.”
Three of the men are under arrest — one in Brooklyn and two in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago — and officials are seeking a fourth in Trinidad. The arrests were made, authorities said, because they felt they had gathered enough evidence, including numerous audio recordings, to successfully prosecute the suspects.
According to court papers, Russell Defreitas, 63, the Brooklyn man arrested, came up with the bombing plot during his years working at the airport. He told an FBI informant that he had seen “military parts being shipped to Israel, including missiles that he felt would be used to kill Muslims.” As a result, Defreitas said he wanted to do something to strike back.
Defreitas, a U.S. citizen and a native of Guyana, later told the informant that when he used to work at Kennedy, “these things used to come into my brain — well, I could blow this place up. … And I would say, if I could get a rocket, then I could do a hit.”
Defreitas thought that destroying Kennedy Airport in particular would hurt Americans and the U.S. economy alike, according to the court complaint.
[…]
The alleged plot, which authorities had been monitoring for about 18 months, involved men with connections in Guyana and Trinidad. Defreitas and the informant also made a number of trips to the two Caribbean countries, leaving law enforcement officials to claim that there is a new region of the world to be mindful of for terrorism threats.

A lot of liberals are saying the severity of the terrorist threat has been greatly inflated (to phrase it nicely). Personally, I think they are all delusional. How else can one explain people who think that terrorists are simply misunderstood and that our government is the real enemy?

These four men are evil, and they wanted to murder as many people as they could. There is nothing inflated about that.

I firmly believe that it is no accident that not a single terrorist attack by Islamic fascists has been successfully implemented on American soil since 2001 September 11. It is the result of vigilance and an appropriate use of surveillance. All Americans ought to be grateful that the FBI, DHS, and other federal agencies are working hard to ensure their safety. Regrettably, so many on the left are unwilling to do that lest they actually admit that the executive branch under the leadership of George W. Bush has done anything right.

The XDR-TB Quarantine

2007-05-30T21:40:00.000-05:00

I realize that human beings are selfish creatures by their very nature, but every once in a while, I am still amazed at how self-centered a person can be, to the detriment of everyone around him. Such is the case with the Atlanta man who has been diagnosed with a dangerous form of tuberculosis and is the first person to be quarantined by the U.S. government since 1963.

Earlier this month, the man was told that he had extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), which is extremely difficult to cure once contracted. He was told by his doctors that in order to limit his exposure to other people, he should wear a mask while in public and should abstain from any unnecessary traveling. But the man had already planned a wedding and honeymoon in Europe and chose not to follow the recommendations of the doctors.

So the guy took a commercial flight to Europe, potentially exposing everyone on board to his contagious disease. While in Europe, the man was contacted by a quarantine officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was given orders not to travel any more while arrangements were made to get him back to the U.S. for treatment.

But once again, the man did not heed the warning. Instead, he took another flight — this time to Canada — and then drove by car across the border into the United States. The TB-infected man has since told reporters that the reason for his sneaky return to the U.S. was that he was afraid he might die and thought that he needed to get back to the country to get treatment, despite the fact that the CDC told him that it was working on a plan to retrieve him from Europe while keeping his exposure to others at a minimum. The CDC has caught up with the man, and he is now in quarantine at its Atlanta headquarters.

The selfishness of this man, whose name has not yet been released, is astounding. He was more concerned with his own well-being than that of everyone around him and because of that, he may have exposed hundreds of people to XDR-TB. The CDC is working to track down passengers who were seated near the man during his multiple airline flights. And as a precautionary measure, free tuberculin skin tests are being offered by health departments around the country to anyone who rode on one of the flights with the TB-infected patient.

But had the man shown just a little bit of concern for others, a lot of trouble could have been avoided. It is a real shame that he was only thinking of himself.

Update (2007-06-06): A week has passed, and several more details are known. The man’s name is Andrew Speaker; he is a personal-injury lawyer who lives in Atlanta. Last week, he was moved from Atlanta to a hospital in Denver, Colorado for further treatment. In a truly strange twist to the story, Speaker’s father-in-law is actually an research microbiologist who studies TB at the CDC. In my opinion that makes Speaker’s even more selfish, since he should have known how contagious tuberculosis can be.

A big commotion has been raised about the fact the a border patrol agent allowed Speaker into the country despite a directive being issued that the man posed a health risk. This is a serious security issue, and the Department of Homeland Security has said that border officials will no longer be permitted to make such decisions without the approval of a supervisor.

Congress is holding hearings pertaining to the health scare and how federal agencies handled the situation, and Andrew Speaker testified this morning via telephone from Denver. It is interesting to see that Speaker’s version of the tale differs from the reports of the health officials. Speaker claims that he was not told he was contagious and that he shouldn’t fly. Personally, I don’t believe him. Given the word of medical professionals who were concerned with the health and safety of a patient and all those he came into contact with and the word of a man whose only thought was getting to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon, I am going to side with the medical professionals.

I don’t think Andrew Speaker is a horrible human being; he is just a guy who gave into his own self-centered nature. We have all done so from time to time, just probably not before a world-wide audience. I think this whole story helps show how important it is that we look out for one another and what kind of trouble can occur when we don’t.

What Heroes Gave

2007-05-29T12:14:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was Memorial Day in the United States. It is a federal holiday dedicated to the memory of all the soldiers who have died fighting for this country. I hope that all of my American readers took some time yesterday to remember those who gave everything they had because of their love for our great nation.

What Heroes Gave

by Roger J. Robicheau (SP5, U.S. Army)
“The Poetic Plumber”

Each donned their uniform to be
Defenders of our liberty

Their mission sure, their spirits bright
Guard freedom’s home, be brave to fight

One final day each faced their call
Each gave their best enduring all

We’ll never know what they went through
But know they loved this country true

Deep down inside we should all feel
What heroes gave, their cost so real

We must stay thankful, grateful of
The gift of freedom through their love

Their loved ones bore the gravest pain
What we can’t know, some now sustain

To God I pray their pain will cease
And each will find long-lasting peace

Remember this from year to year
What heroes gave — shan’t disappear

We’ll never let their special day
Their time for honor slip away

These brave fought for a nation free
If not for them, where would we be?

The Foolishness of a Gas “Price War”

2007-05-26T09:06:00.000-05:00

From time to time, I receive forwarded emails similar to the following in my inbox:

Join the resistance! Want gasoline prices to come down? It is possible! We need to take some intelligent, united action.
We all know that we are “being taken for a ride” by the gas companies who are reporting huge record-breaking profits! Gas companies want us to believe that gas is cheap at $3.00 per gallon just because other countries pay over $5.00 per gallon. Who cares? This is America!
We must act aggressively and show them that U.S. consumers do have some control over prices, and it is time gas/oil companies start paying attention! The best way to be successful is to hit them where it hurts: their bank accounts! Since we all need our vehicles, we cannot simply stop buying gas; however, we can have a significant impact on the price of gas if we act together to initiate a price war!
Here’s the idea: do not buy gas from Exxon or Shell until gas prices fall to $2.00 or less per gallon. If these major gas companies do not sell gas and lose huge revenues, they must lower their prices to win back customers. This will immediately result in a price war with all gas/oil companies. When their revenues drop, they will react to protect their job security and their company. Gas prices will start tumbling back to normal!
Let’s do this for the remainder of 2007. Hit them where it hurts — their pocket books. They sure don’t mind taking our money!

The emails usually come from well-meaning family members who are trying to “spread the word.” Typically, I just ignore them, but today I got one, and it just rubbed me the wrong way. So now, I feel the need to vent about how foolish this train of thought is.

First of all, in response to the snide comment that oil companies “don’t mind taking our money”: well, of course they don’t mind taking money! This is a capitalist society, and oil companies are in the business of turning a profit in order pay their employees and shareholders. They don’t drill for, pump, refine, and transport oil for free; they do it because the oil industry is a profitable business. There is no reason why they should feel guilty about making money. But the implication of the email is that oil companies make too much money, that they are filled with greedy executives who are only concerned with getter richer, and that they keep gas prices artificially high, to the detriment of common folks who get charged far too much to fill up their vehicles. Greedy executives do exist and may even be plentiful, but implying that corporate greed is the only possible explanation for high gas prices is extremely naïve.

One obvious cause for the high price of gasoline is consumers themselves. The United States is a nation of great abundance, but it is also a nation of incredible excess and waste. And one of the resources which we continuously waste is oil. As President Bush said in his 2006 State of the Union speech, “America is addicted to oil.” American drivers do much more driving than is needed. We drive to our work places even when we could carpool with a coworker. We drive to the grocery store multiple times in a week to pick up only a couple of items when a little planning could probably consolidate most of those trips into one. We drive over to friends’ houses, even when they live within the distance of a comfortable walk. Sometimes, we even drive merely for the fun of it. I am not saying that all this driving is necessarily wrong, but it is not conservative, and it requires a tremendous amount of gasoline. I bet that gas prices have much more to do with the law of supply and demand than they do with moneygrubbing corporate executives.

Aside from the false notion that oil company greed is the exclusive cause of high gas prices, the email also supposes that by isolating a few select companies with which consumers will refuse to do business, gas prices will eventually fall everywhere. In addition to having a flawed premise, I must admit that I find this proposal to be extremely cruel. The idea seems to be basically saying, “The oil companies are (supposedly) hurting us, so let’s hurt them back!” That is hardly a moral stance to take.

According to the plan, only a couple of gasoline-producing companies (Exxon Mobil Corporation and Shell Oil Company) are targeted with the boycott — one presumes because they are two of the largest. But who got to decide which oil companies to inflict this loss of revenue upon? Why not choose to target Citgo, a subsidiary of the state-run petroleum company in Venezuela, which is controlled by the socialist dictator Hugo Chávez? Why not boycott BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and others which purchase at least some of their oil from Middle Eastern companies located in countries which are hostile to the U.S.? The reason for attempting to financially harm these two specific companies and not others does not appear to be well thought out.

Now, to the most important point: even assuming that corporate greed (and not consumer greed) is the primary factor in the price of fuel and that Exxon and Shell are the companies most deserving of ostracism, the plan outlined in these frequently-forwarded emails would never work. A simple search on the Urban Legends Reference Pages (Snopes.com) returns this page which explains why this is so:

The “gas out” schemes that propose to alter the demand side of the equation by shunning one or two specific brands of gasoline for a while won’t work, however, because they’re based on the misconception that an oil company’s only outlet for gasoline is its own branded service stations. That isn’t the case: gasoline is a fungible commodity, so if one oil company’s product isn’t being bought up in one particular market or outlet, it will simply sell its output to (or through) other outlets.
[…]
A boycott of a couple of brands of gasoline won’t result in lower overall prices. Prices at all the non-boycotted outlets would rise due to the temporarily limited supply and increased demand, making the original prices look cheap by comparison. The shunned outlets could then make a killing by offering gasoline at its “normal” (i.e., pre-boycott) price or by selling off their output to the non-boycotted companies, who will need the extra supply to meet demand. The only person who really gets hurt in this proposed scheme is the service station operator, who has almost no control over the price of gasoline.

Put simply, any plan to boycott certain brands of gasoline will undoubtedly backfire. The oil companies won’t really be hurt at all, gas station owners will be hurt even though they have little control over gas prices, and people could end up paying even more for gasoline, at least temporarily. It is an all-around bad idea.

Despite my numerous complaints with the notion of retaliating against the oil companies, I understand and appreciate the sentiment behind it: gas prices are too high. With gasoline averaging over three dollars a gallon all over the country, consumers are naturally frustrated, and this consumer is no exception. A lot of people are feeling a sense of helplessness and a desire to do something about it. But any chosen action needs to be based on reason instead of emotion. The plan being forwarded to thousands of email inboxes is anything but logical.

Fortunately, there actually is something that we can all do to help bring down the price of gasoline, and that is use less of it. Not only will people obviously spend less on gas by using less, but a decrease in the demand throughout the nation will most assuredly bring down the price. Limiting gas consumption may be a foreign idea to some, but it is the best solution for easing the pain felt at the fuel pump. Several good ways of decreasing the amount of gas you use are buying a more fuel-efficient vehicle (for those who can afford it), driving more economically, and taking an alternative method of transportation whenever possible (including walking). With a little willpower, we can all take steps to reduce our demand of gasoline, and therefore, its price.

Reality and the Polls

2007-05-24T21:57:00.000-05:00

A new poll on the war in Iraq, organized jointly by CBS News and The New York Times (those quintessential models of unbiased reporting — not) purports to show that more Americans than ever before - a whopping 76% - think the war is going badly and a healthy majority of 61% believe that America’s involvement in Iraq was a mistake.

Liberals just love polls like this one. For them, it completely validates the belief in their own minds that removing a dictatorial regime responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians and attempting to establish a democratic form of government in its place was a terrible idea. You can sense the smugness with which the “findings” are presented by the left-leaning media.

For me personally, it doesn’t mean a thing. Like most Americans, I have already made up my mind about this war. But no amount of negative polling could possibly sway me to believe that overthrowing Sadam Hussein was a mistake. I don’t care if the polls say that 99.9% of Americans think going into Iraq was wrong; there is little doubt in my mind that the Bush Doctrine was the right course of action following the events of 9/11.

Is it possible that I could be totally wrong about everything? Of course it is. In fact, I think that it is wise for everyone to reevaluate their most closely-held beliefs from time to time. After some thorough scrutiny, one’s beliefs will either be confirmed and strengthened or disproven and (hopefully) abandoned. It may be especially prudent to reconsider one’s own views when one finds that an overwhelming majority of people opposes them.

But here’s the thing: reality is not affected by poll numbers. The truth is still true whether everyone believes it or no one does. We all have our own opinions which are influenced in part by our own biases, but regardless of what we believe, the facts don’t change. Our beliefs may result in actions which can alter circumstances, but beliefs alone cannot change what actually is.

And honestly, as much as we hear about the “wisdom of crowds,” crowds aren’t always so wise. After a certain point, I have to believe that the high negative numbers about the Iraq War have more to do with the bandwagon effect than being the result of individuals conducting careful analyses of the situation. Did every member of the seventy-six percent polled who think the war is going badly really study up on the conditions on the frontline, or are they basing their feelings on what they hear on the news? My guess is the latter.

I have no idea whether the war’s negative poll numbers will continue to rise, level off, or even go down, but whatever happens in the future, I refuse to allow the liberal media’s insistence that the war was a mistake to shape my view. Based upon what we knew then and even with what we know now, removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision for the security of not only the United States but the whole world. The media’s poll numbers may say differently, but reality doesn’t care.

Biblical Indecency

2007-05-22T06:02:00.001-05:00

I never ceased to be amazed at the large number of people who demonstrate animosity toward the Bible and its teachings. Apparently, a couple of thousand Hong Kong residents chose to ignore the main tenets of the Bible and instead focus on the portions which make reference to sex or violence in an attempt to get the Good Book labeled as “indecent.” Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and the complaints went nowhere.

HONG KONG (Reuters) — Hong Kong’s media regulator has rejected calls to reclassify the Bible as an indecent publication following more than 2,000 complaints about its sexual and violent content, including rape and incest.
“The Bible is a religious text which is part of civilization. It has been passed from generation to generation,” Hong Kong’s Television and Licensing Authority (TELA) said in a statement issued late Thursday [May 17].
It said it would not submit the Bible to the Obscene Articles Tribunal for classification.
The regulator received 2,041 complaints against the Bible this week, following an uproar over a sex column in a student magazine that was classified as “indecent” by authorities for asking if readers had ever fantasized about incest or bestiality.
A Web site launched soon afterwards campaigned to have the Bible similarly classified, citing passages with sexual and violent content it claimed went beyond that of the sex column.
But TELA said in its statement the Bible “had not violated standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable members of the community.”
Publications classified as indecent in Hong Kong can only be bought by people aged over 18 and must be sealed in a wrapper with a statutory warning notice.

How can so many people show such hatred toward a Book which contains central themes of love and forgiveness? It truly baffles me.

The comparison between the Bible and a sex column is ludicrous for many reasons. A primary one is that — unlike the sex column — the Bible is not endorsing sinful behavior. The column, published by the Chinese University Student Press, encourages deviant sexual behavior in its writing. On the other hand, the Bible is, in part, a record of the history of Israel, and that includes the good parts and the bad parts. Passages such as this, this, and this are not advocating immorality; they are merely recording what actually happened. If anything, the so-called “indecent” parts of the Bible actually reveal the sinfulness of man apart from God, and mankind’s need for a Savior.

In my opinion, the worst thing about this attack against the Bible is that had the antagonists succeeded in their attempt to have the Holy Scripture classified as indecent, only people over the age of eighteen would be able to purchase it. This could potentially make it considerably more difficult for minors to read the words of Jesus and learn about His life, death, and resurrection. Without easy access to the Bible, the children of Hong Kong may become far less likely to recognize their own sinfulness and need for salvation at a time in their lives when they are most likely to make a commitment to Jesus. I find it incredibly troubling that these Bible-hating citizens would sacrifice the spiritual welfare of the city’s children because of their anger about an “indecent” labeled being applied to a smutty sex column.

It is regrettable that the 2,041 Biblical complainers have chosen pettiness over the life-saving message of the Bible. I pray that they will all one day join the “reasonable members of the community” and embrace the Bible not only as an exceptional source of history, poetry, and philosophy but also as the testament which holds the words of eternal life.

Some Thoughts on the Second Republican Debate

2007-05-16T19:54:00.001-05:00

The second GOP Presidential debate (billed as the “First in the South” debate by Fox News), which took place on Tuesday night in Columbia, South Carolina, was a huge improvement over the one which aired on MSNBC two weeks ago. This one, put on by the Fox News Channel, featured the same ten candidates but was much more professional in its tone and its line of questioning.

Brit Hume, who moderated the debate, along with Chris Wallace and Wendell Goler who both assisted Hume in posing questions to the candidates, were all respectful and impartial, unlike MSNBC’s Chris Matthews during the first debate. The questions which were asked were also much more relevant to the issues with which voters are concerned; there was no outright stupid questions like during the MSNBC/Politico debate (“What do you dislike the most about America?”; “Would you hire Karl Rove?”; “Should Bill Clinton be back in the White House?”; etc.). To Fox News’s credit, the time given to each of the candidates was also much more equal than it was during the first debate, which gave Mitt Romney considerably more speaking time than any of the other candidates.

Now that I have my Fox-praising and MSNBC-bashing out of the way, I have some comments on the actual content of the debate. Instead of doing a rundown of each of the candidates like last time, I am just going to mention what stuck out for me.

The most intense moment of the evening was definitely the sparring between Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul about 9/11. Congressman Paul claimed that terrorists attacked the U.S. because “we’ve been bombing Iraq for ten years.” Giuliani shot back, “That’s really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of 9/11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I have ever heard that before, and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.” He then asked the congressman to withdraw his comment, which Paul refused to do. This is will likely be one of the clips which is replayed again and again in the days to come.
The other moment which will received plenty of airplay is the one-liner uttered by Mike Huckabee. Speaking about fiscal discipline (an area in which Huckabee has some convincing to do) the former governor from Arkansas stated that Congress has been spending money “like John Edwards in a beauty shop.” This was in reference to the former senator’s $400 haircuts. I honestly thought the comment by Huckabee was a cheap shot (no pun intended) which, while getting applause from the partisans in the audience, was inappropriate since Edwards was not there to defend himself. Huckabee better stick to convincing people why he is the best choice for President instead of tearing others down.
Fortunately, Mike Huckabee was able to redeem himself from the Edwards quip by giving one of the best pro-life arguments that I have ever heard from a candidate. And Sam Brownback followed him with an eloquent explanation as to why opposition to abortion is still the right position even for victims of rape. Both men’s arguments in favor of supporting life were grounded in both logic and morality. This makes Giuliani’s position on abortion even more problematic.
Speaking of Rudy, the former New York mayor continues to try to explain his “nuanced” view of abortion. I understand why this keeps getting brought up, but I am quickly tiring of hearing his reasons for being personally opposed to abortion and yet still believing in a woman’s “right to choose.” Mike Huckabee makes an excellent point about Giuliani’s view of abortion being like saying, “I hate slavery, but people can go ahead and practice it.”
Mitt Romney’s own view of abortion has changed as has some of his opinions on other social issues. The media has been harping on this a lot, but when I hear him speak about why he has changed his mind, his words make sense, and I believe him.
Romney is tough on the illegal immigration issue, and he is no fan of the compromising immigration bill sponsored by Edward Kennedy and fellow Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. The former Massachusetts governor stated, “My fear is that McCain–Kennedy would do to immigration what McCain–Feingold has done to campaign finance and money in politics, and that’s bad.” Ouch.
In opposition to the growing number of voices calling for the closure of Guantánamo Bay, Romney actually recommends doubling the size of the prison camp there. That is not a very popular opinion, and I am glad that Romney is bold enough to express it.
John McCain is against torture; no news there. The problem with McCain’s view in my opinion is that he views any form of aggressive interrogation as torture. I am as opposed to actual torture as Senator McCain is, but I also recognize that the captured terrorists are not going to spill their plans just because we ask nicely. Certain methods of coercion do work, and they ought to be used in our fight against an enemy that would not hesitate to use genuine torture against us.
I must say that Congressman Tom Tancredo did a much better job explaining his view of global warming than Huckabee did in the previous debate. Climate change is not an issue that conservatives should shy away from, and I am glad that Tancredo took the issue head on.
Virginia governor Jim Gilmore continues to claim that he is more conservative than the other candidates; this time, he started naming names. I don’t dispute Gilmore’s conservative credentials, but I just don’t think this strategy is going to work well for him.
Chris Wallace told Ron Paul that a recent poll found that seventy-seven percent of Republicans disapprove of the idea of setting a timetable for withdrawal out of Iraq. Wallace then asked Paul who wants to pull out all of our troops, “Are you running for the nomination of the wrong party?” Congressman Paul answered the question adequately, but it will probably not satisfy the die-hard Republicans who believe that Paul is a RINO. Personally, I don’t think one’s views on the war should matter in regards to one’s political affiliation. Republicans claim that they are a “big tent” party, and if that is the case, Ron Paul’s minority opinion (as far as the party is concerned) ought to be welcomed.
Having just defended Ron Paul, let me state for the record that his idea of eliminating the Department of Homeland Security while an ongoing war against terrorism is taking place is flat-out absurd. I understand his desire to reduce the federal bureaucracy; it is, after all, a desire that I share. But that should not come at the expense of our national security. DHS is an important — and I believe vital — agency in post-9/11 America. In a foregone era of conventional warfare, Homeland Security may not have been necessary, but I don’t know how our country could manage without it these days when any twenty-something Islamist male with an anti-American grudge and an elementary knowledge of how to build a bomb can be a threat to millions of Americans.
Since the debate took place in South Carolina, I was not too surprised that John McCain was asked about his opinion on the controversy pertaining to a Confederate battle flag which once adorned the top of the state capitol. While running for President back in 2000, McCain initially said that the Confederate flag issue was a matter of states’ rights (which it is). But later on, he revealed his true feeling that the flag ought to be removed. It has been seven years since McCain first made the remarks, and I know he is tired of responding to questions about it. It seemed fairly evident from the audience’s response to the question that they are tired of it as well. Still, I believe it was a fair question, especially since he was in South Carolina and is once again running for President.
One of the more novel lines of questioning was based upon a fictional terrorist attack in the U.S. and how each of the candidates would respond if he were President. I got the impression that a few of the candidates did not like being asked about a “hypothetical attack,” but I thought that the terrorist scenario laid out by Brit Hume was plausible and pertinent, considering the time of terrorism in which we live. It is important for voters to understand how the Presidential hopefuls would react if another terrorist attack took place on American soil. The war will no doubt be the biggest issue during next year’s election, and those who want to hold the highest office in the land need to show the American people why they will do the best job fighting our enemies and keeping us safe.

I came away from this debate feeling like I knew the candidates better than I did following the MSNBC debate. My attitude toward each of the office-seekers is becoming more solidified, in part because of opportunities like this one to see them side-by-side. In my mind, I am starting to separate the candidates into those whom I would gladly vote for, those who I would grudgingly vote for, and those whom I could only support if I deemed the Democratic nominee to be a worse choice for the country (which is likely).

I look forward to seeing more debates of this caliber as the number of candidates begins to dwindle and we are left with those who are most likely to have a chance of being the next President of the United States.

Jerry Falwell Has Passed Away at 73

2007-05-15T16:52:00.000-05:00

The Reverend Jerry Falwell, a Christian televangelist and founder and chancellor of Liberty University (where one of my nieces went to college), was found unconscious in his office this morning. The announcement was made this afternoon at a press conference that the reverend had died.

Falwell was considered a controversial figure by many, but I believe that even though he said some outlandish things at times, his heart was in the right place. He truly loved the Lord and strived to live a life of faithful obedience. May he rest in eternal peace with his Savior.

Cherry Picking the Global Warming Data

2007-05-15T12:46:00.000-05:00

With a subject as controversial as anthropogenic global warming, one would hope that the studies coming from the United Nations on the topic would be unbiased and purely fact-based. Sadly, that is not the case, as revealed in this article by Canadian scientists Timothy Ball (about whom I have written before) and Tom Harris of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project.

“Stopping climate change” may be all the rage with celebrities and environmental lobbyists, but fortunately for the rest of us, the scare’s scientific foundation is rapidly disintegrating.
One of the fundamental pillars of the hypothesis that humanity is causing dangerous climate change is the belief that levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂), the greenhouse gas of concern in countries such as Canada, have been rising steadily since the start of the industrial revolution. But what if CO₂ levels have not increased? How could our emissions of this otherwise benign gas then have anything to do with the past century’s modest warming?
While Antarctic ice core records supposedly “prove” a significant increase in CO₂ in this period, there are serious problems with this data. Besides the fact that ice bubbles take about 80 years to form and so cannot give a single year accurate measure, the continual freezing, refreezing and pressurization of ice columns may greatly alter the original composition of the air trapped in the bubbles. Nevertheless, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and many others have accepted as meaningful the ice core results that indicate a pre-industrial CO₂ level of 280 parts per million (ppm), in comparison with today’s 385 ppm.
The most accurate way to determine the atmosphere’s average CO₂ content is to simply conduct a direct chemical analysis at many different places and times. Fortunately, there are more than 90,000 direct measurements by chemical methods between 1857 and 1957. However, in what appears to be a case of “cherry-picking” data to fit a pre-determined conclusion, only the lower level CO₂ data were included when the pre-industrial average was calculated. This is the average that was used to supposedly “validate” the long term ice core records on which Al Gore and others depend.

That the IPCC would underreport the CO₂ average of years before mankind could have had a significant impact on the global environment in order to make the current levels appear more dangerous is despicable. Unfortunately, cherry picking data in order to fit one’s own agenda seems to be silently permitted in the scientific community these days.

There are plenty of serious issues which mankind is having to address in 2007. Global warming may or may not be one of them, but it does no one any good to portray the problem as more dire than it really is.

Why Jamestown Is Important

2007-05-14T17:02:00.000-05:00

Four hundred years ago today, an island in the James River was chosen as the permanent site of the Jamestown colony. Jamestown was not the first settlement in the New World (St. Augustine beat it by over forty years) or even the first English one (there were several previously failed colonies like the mysterious “Lost Colony” on Roanoke Island), yet it is looked back on by Americans with great fondness and esteem. Why does Jamestown get all the love? It does so for several reasons.

Representative government — Jamestown is notable for having the first representative government of the New World. The early colonists realized that they needed to form a government in order to preserve order and promote justice. Knowing that direct democracy does not work well except in the most limited of circumstances, they established a system which was based on English Common Law and which included representatives, elected by the property owners, who met with the colony’s governor to address their issues. The House of Burgesses was created at Jamestown and eventually came to represent the entire Colony of Virginia as its legislative body. Furthermore, the government of the United States as defined in the Constitution is heavily influenced by the republican government which began at Jamestown.
Capitalism — Making money is practically considered iniquitous by many in the media today (just ask the CEO of any oil company which has shown a profit in recent years), but capitalism has been proven to be the best way to get an economy thriving. Although The Jamestown settlement suffered early on from multiple setbacks, it was ultimately turned around into a profit-making enterprise by exporting their crops — namely tobacco — to Europe. Despite incredible hardships, those who are willing to work hard can become successful and make a better life for themselves; Jamestown is a testament to that fact.
Property ownership — The right to own property is a cherished right of Americans, and so it was with the early Americans at Jamestown. In the earliest days of the colony, all property was owned by the Virginia Company, which held the charter to Jamestown. Because no one owned his own land or food, there existed little incentive to work hard, since everything went into the common pool. The Virginia Company surmised correctly that if the settlers were able to own the land on which they lived and worked, they would show greater initiative. Acting on this belief, the company ended its monopoly on land ownership and gave property to the colonists, who immediately became more productive since they knew they could keep what was theirs. Although this may appear greedy on the surface, the desire to possess private property is an innately human one and should not be denied.
Biblical foundation — While the residents of Jamestown were very human — and therefore very flawed — they did bring their Christian faith with them and established their new settlement with Biblical principles. The most notable example of this was when Captain John Smith (inspired by 2 Thessalonians 3:10) initiated the rule that “He that will not work shall not eat,” in response to the gentlemen–adventurers who felt they were of too noble a blood to do menial labor. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, one of the primary motivations of the Jamestown settlers was to carry the message of the Christian gospel to the New World. The colonists initiated “Christian relations” with the natives and even converted many of them to Christianity. It has become commonplace today to omit the spiritual motivations of history, but the story of Jamestown would not be complete without telling of its Christian moorings.

The main reason why the founding of Jamestown deserves much celebration is because the United States of America may not have ever been born had it not been for the influences of its English predecessor. Without a doubt, the traditional and conservative principles evident in Jamestown helped form the nation that was to follow.

That may offend those who prefer the secular, eminent-domain, socialist, welfare state that the U.S. is ever-so-slowly moving toward, but it is not what the earliest founders of our nation had in mind. If Jamestown had been founded with the liberal/progressive “values” which pervade our culture today, I dare say that it would be remembered not as a forbearer of our great nation, but as a miserable failure.

I Am Bert

2007-05-12T10:34:00.000-05:00

What does it say about me that I knew that I would be Bert before I even took this silly Sesame Street Personality Quiz?

You Are Bert
Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you loveable — even if you don't love them!
You are usually feeling: Logical — you rarely let your emotions rule you.
You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil.
How you live your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others.

Sadly, most of that is true! While I don’t collect bottle caps, I do actually have some pigeons living on my back porch. It is pretty pathetic when your personality can be fairly accurately described by a Muppet.

Nightline Face-Off: Christianity Versus Atheism

2007-05-10T12:26:00.000-05:00

I caught the Nightline segment last night which featured two Christians — Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort of The Way of the Master ministry — and two atheists — Brian Sapient (not his real last name) and “Kelly” of the of the Rational Response Squad — debating over whether or not God exists.

I must say that I was rather disappointed with the whole thing. The version that aired on Nightline edited out some of the better content, but as a whole (available online), it wasn’t much better. Both sides offered some fairly weak arguments. The Christians probably fared a little worse because they explicitly stated before the debate that they could prove the existence of God without falling back on the Bible and faith; but not too far into the discussion, Ray Comfort was using the Bible to explain that God is eternal and where cancer comes from.

I don’t think that trying to omit the Bible from the debate was a wise decision on the part of Cameron and Comfort. I realize that the words of Scripture carry no weight with the Rational Response Squad, so using it as the primary/sole authority in their argument would not have worked. But my concern is that by leaving the Bible completely out of the debate (which they ultimately failed to do), the Christians would give the atheists the impression that the Good Book is not necessary to understanding Who God is.

While arguments about morality and design in nature may give evidence to the existence of a higher power, it is the words of the Bible which show that this Power exists as three Persons: God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Bible is crucial to the Christian faith, so by choosing not to use it, Cameron and Comfort were on shakier ground from the start.

That wasn’t their only problem; the Christian duo chose to use some pretty ridiculous examples. While disputing the theory of evolution, Kirk Cameron pulled out pictures of imaginary “missing links” like the croco-duck (half crocodile, half duck) and the bull-frog (half frog, half bull). Honestly, it was hard to determine if he was trying to lighten the mood or if these were actually the kind of transitional forms he would expect to see (I highly doubt that, but again, Cameron was not clear that he was making a joke). Darwinian evolution has enough holes to poke that it was entirely unnecessary to bring in images of funny animal hybrids. (The picture of the croco-duck actually showed up on the O’Reilly Factor earlier in the evening when Bill O’Reilly interviewed Kirk Cameron about the debate. As soon as Cameron pulled out the silly picture, I thought to myself, I hope that wasn’t used in the debate. Unfortunately, it was.)

The atheists had their share of problems as well. Besides confusing the first and third laws of thermodynamics, the atheists made all sorts of statements about how science is on their side and their opposition is ignorant. At one point, the atheist Brian Sapient even stated that Ray Comfort did not know how the world was made, so he “made up a god” to explain it.

Putting aside Brian’s flawed argument that this is merely a science vs. faith debate, he seems to be ignoring the fact that Ray didn’t invent his God; the Christian faith has existed in its current form for nearly two thousand years, and millions of intelligent people have deemed it to be reliable. In order for Brian to label Ray a quack, he will also have to apply that same standard to the vast majority of Americans who share the beliefs of Ray and Kirk.

Another poor showing was when Kelly was asked about how atheism deals with the issue of morality, and while stumbling for an answer, the lady atheist uttered this classic line: “Atheism is not necessary total moral relativism.” Not necessary total moral relativism? Luckily, her partner jumped in to try to save her argument, but I think this incident shows that the existence of a moral standard is an area where atheism struggles for a response. While those who deny God cannot provide a suitable explanation for why an absolute moral standard exists, Christianity can and does so decisively. I really think that Ray and Kirk should have led with the moral argument instead of the design/Designer one.

One other thing I noticed about the debate was how different the two sides behaved. The Christians were polite and respectful for the most part. The atheists, on the other hand, came off as extremely belligerent and condescending. The same divergence could be noticed in the audience. Those who were invited to attend the debate were split evenly between Christians and atheists. I barely heard the Christian audience members except for some light applause on a few occasions. Unfortunately, the atheistic audience was not so well-behaved; they mocked and heckled Kirk and Ray quite a bit throughout the debate. No taunts could be heard directed to the Brian and Kelly from the Christian side.

All in all, it was an OK debate, but it was not spectacular. Neither camp gave any arguments that I feel would convince someone who did not already believe in that side’s view. The atheists got angry; the Christians got frustrated. Nothing productive came out of it, and no one walked away feeling that it was a positive, enlightening discussion. Like I said, I was disappointed.

Fortunately, there are more professional Christianity/atheism debates where the arguments are better articulated and the participants are more knowledgeable and more respectful. One such debate is currently taking place (via written responses) between theologian Douglas Wilson and atheist Christopher Hitchens. Christianity Today invited Wilson, author of Letter from a Christian Citizen, and Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (the title gets right to the point, doesn’t it?), to share their views, and they were happy to oblige; the discussion thus far can be found on the CT website. Unlike the Nightline debate, the Wilson/Hitchens debate is engaging and thought-provoking and gives me hope that civilized debate between the two sides is still possible.

Hotmail Becomes “Windows Live Hotmail”

2007-05-08T17:04:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, I was a Hotmail user. I used the webmail service regularly for several years, not because I thought it was the best one around, but because it did the job. Sure, it had a measly two megabytes of storage and aggravating banner advertisements, but it worked and it was free, so I couldn’t complain, right?

But then Google came out with its Gmail service, and my expectations of what web-based email should be like completely changed. Gmail had more storage space than I could fill in years, a slick Ajax interface, free POP3 access, small and innocuous text ads, and amazingly accurate spam filters. Over time, the service added many more features like instant messaging, web feeds, and — the most important of all — a Delete button.

In light of the coolness of Gmail and the new Yahoo! Mail, which has an interface that mimics Microsoft Outlook in may aspects, Hotmail has been very lacking. So Microsoft has been working very diligently on creating a new, modern webmail service. The result has been in beta for sometime (well over a year) and has been called Windows Live Mail. This week, the final version was launched at last and renamed Windows Live Hotmail (I don’t like Microsoft’s trend of prefixing all of its next-generation web properties with the phrase “Windows Live”; they have nothing to do with the Windows OS, and they are obviously live, as opposed to being offline or dead. Alas, Microsoft didn’t ask my opinion).

The new Hotmail is fancier than the old one, but to me, it just doesn’t match the usability of Gmail. I like the preview pane and the shortcut keys for selecting multiple messages and deleting, but overall, the interface is just slow (there is a classic version available, but you lose all the Ajax slickness). And it doesn’t having the bells that Gmail has, like web-based chat, message threads, mail forwarding, vacation responder, and RSS/Atom feeds. Also, there is still no POP3 access (or IMAP, for that matter); to get your email out of Hotmail, you are expected to use one of Microsoft’s approved desktop clients, like Outlook or Windows Mail.

I realize that the new Hotmail is a big step for Microsoft and probably for the millions of people who still use it as their primary email address (my mother is one of them). But for the rest of us who have been exposed to far superior services like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, or even the open-source Zimbra software, Microsoft is just barely playing catch-up, much less conducting the kind of innovation which the company always brags about.

Some Thoughts on the First Republican Presidential Debate

2007-05-07T19:48:00.000-05:00

I had some downtime this weekend, so I finally got around to watching the Republican Presidential debate from last week (I completely skipped the Democratic debate from the week before because — to be perfectly blunt — there is very little chance that I would vote for any of them).

The debate was was kind of interesting, even though several of the questions were ridiculous and had little to do with the main issues of the day. My opinions of all the candidates did not change too much, with the exception of a few conservative candidates whom I like a little more now that I know more about them and Rudy Giuliani, who becomes more and more unelectable to me every time he opens his mouth. Here are my post-debate feelings toward the candidates:

Candidates whom I view more favorably:

Mitt Romney — The former Massachusetts governor certainly seemed to be the most at ease of all the candidates. His comfortableness and congeniality made him appear very Reagan-esque — and therefore very Presidential. One thing that definitely helped Governor Romney in the debate was the fact that Chris Matthews gave him more time to speak than any other candidate.
Sam Brownback — Senator Brownback is a very consistent conservative, and I find myself agreeing with most of what he says. I liked him before the debate, and I like him a little more now having heard him eloquently explain his views.
Duncan Hunter — Representative Hunter had the least amount of talking time of any of the candidates, but I think he did quite well in spite of the debate’s inequality. As the one-time chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, he is somewhat of an expert on the War on Terror, and it shows in his answers relating to the war.

Candidates whom I feel the same about:

John McCain — The Arizona senator was asked more questions than anyone else, but I am not sure that it did him much good. As he has done in the past, McCain really harped too much on the mismanagement of the war instead of focusing on the future. To the chagrin of many conservatives, McCain also stated that he would fund embryonic stem cell research with federal dollars. And in response to a stupid question (one of many), the senator made the contradictory statement that he believes in evolution but also sees God in the Grand Canyon. As John Dickerson of Slate pointed out, “For a guy who is supposed to be pandering to the right wing, McCain sure does a lousy job of it.”
Tom Tancredo — Representative Tancredo is the big anti-illegal immigration candidate, and that came through in the debate. He is also a believer in states’ rights and a small federal government. Tancredo is a nice enough guy, but my opinion of him did not move any because of the debate.
Tommy Thompson — Thompson is the other blue state governor (Romney being the more prominent one), having been the chief executive of Wisconsin. Due to his limited air time, I could not get much of a feel on Thompson, other than his recognition that the federal government has limits on what it can and should do.
Jim Gilmore — the former Virginia governor took the debate opportunity to declare himself a “real conservative.” I don’t know much about Governor Gilmore, but if someone has to state that, it may mean that he feels he has some convincing to do.

Candidates whom I view less favorably:

Rudy Giuliani — I like Mayor Giuliani; I really do. But I don’t think I could vote for him for the highest office in the land. Someone who would be “OK” whether or not Roe v. Wade was overturned is not serious enough about protecting human life for my tastes, despite his insistence that he supports the Hyde Amendment (he stated it twice during the debate). On a completely unrelated note, Giuliani was able to accurately explain the differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims — a feat which some politicians are unable to do, regardless of their position on the war.
Mike Huckabee — Governor Huckabee is a social conservative although I am slightly concerned about how fiscally responsible a President he would be. The former Arkansas governor said a couple of things during the debate that rubbed me the wrong way. Huckabee thinks that Don Rumsfeld should have been fired before the 2006 elections (and it is fine that he feels that way), but he also said that President Bush did not listen to his generals, which — from everything that I have read and heard — is absolutely untrue. He also cleverly dodged a question about global warming by making a general statement about how we should “leave the planet in better shape” than when we inherited it. An OK point, but Huckabee should have had the guts to take a stand on the most-covered environmental issue of our time.
Ron Paul — Representative Paul is a fascinating character. A libertarian who actually looks to the Constitution for answers on how the country should be run, the congressman is a rare breed. A lot of his responses made sense, and I could understand where he was coming from. His political philosophy is very consistent (something else which is rare these days), and I could almost predict how he would answers each question that was posed. But what bothered me was his fervent opposition to the War in Iraq and his (in my opinion, misguided) belief that America should have “a non-interventionist foreign policy.” Despite his federalist ideals, Paul sounded like the most far-left of moonbats when talking about Iraq. He also spent most of the evening using an angry tone, which rarely impresses voters.

Non-candidate whom I now dislike more than I already did:

The biggest loser of the night was — without a doubt — the moderator Chris Matthews. Matthews is a well-known liberal in the media establishment, so it made no sense for him to be moderating a debate for Republicans. The man cannot seem to muster anything resembling fairness or impartiality. Worst of all, he was rude and unprofessional. He spent more time talking with Mitt Romney than any of the other candidates, possibly due to the fact that Romney was positioned closest to him, and he all but ignored Tancredo who was the farthest away.

Matthews also generally gave more attention to the “top-tier” candidates (Romney, McCain, Giuliani), often allowing them to go on and on, but he would silence those whom he was not interested in — the most notable example of which was when he abruptly cut Tancredo off in the middle of a Benjamin Franklin quote. In addition to that, the non-moderate moderator muttered a blasphemous, “Oh, God!” when Ron Paul mentioned original intent and mockingly referred to the Constitution in one question as “divinely inspired.”

In a televised Presidential debate, I feel that it is reasonable to expect that the moderator would be someone who is polite, respectful, and fair in allotting time to each of the participants. Chris Matthews was none of those things.

The President and the Importance of Prayer

2007-05-03T15:54:00.000-05:00

I seem to be in a Bush-quoting rut this week, but you have to admit that the man has excellent speechwriters.

Today is the National Day of Prayer, and President Bush gave a speech this morning to mark the occasion:

Since the days of our founding, our nation has been called to prayer. That’s exactly what our first President did, George Washington. “It’s the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and to humbly implore his protection and favor.” It’s interesting that the first President said those words.
For two centuries, Americans have answered this call to prayer. We’re a prayerful nation. I believe that makes us a strong nation. Each day, millions of our citizens approach our Maker. We pray as congregations in churches and in synagogues, and mosques, and in temples. We welcome people of all faiths into the United States of America.
We pray as families, around the dinner table, and before we go to sleep. We pray alone in silence and solitude, withdrawing from the world to focus on the eternal, spending time in personal recollection with our Creator.
We pray for many reasons. First, we pray to give thanks for the blessings the Almighty has bestowed upon us. We pray to give thanks. We give thanks for our freedom. We give thanks for the brave men and women who risk their lives to defend it. We give thanks for our families who love and support us. We give thanks for our plenty. We give thanks for our nation.
Second, we pray for the strength to follow God’s will in our lives, and for forgiveness when we fail to do so. Through prayer, each of us is reminded that we are fallen creatures in need of mercy, and in seeking the mercy and compassion of a loving God, we grow in mercy and compassion ourselves.
We feel the tug at our souls to reach out to the poor, the elderly, the stranger in distress. And by answering this call to care for our brothers and sisters in need, our hearts grow larger and we enter into a deeper relationship with God.
Third, we pray to acknowledge God’s sovereignty in our lives and our complete dependence on Him. This is probably the toughest prayer of all, particularly for those of us in politics. In the humility of prayer we recognize the limits of human strength and human wisdom. We seek the strength and wisdom that comes from above. We ask for the grace to align our hearts with His, echoing the words of Scripture, “Not my will, but thine be done.” We ask the Almighty to remain near to us and guide us in all we do, and when He is near we are ready for all that may come to us.
Finally, we pray to offer petitions, because our Father in heaven knows our cares and our needs. We trust in the promise of a loving God: Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and ye shall find. Inspired by this confidence we pray that the Almighty will pour out His blessings on those we love. We ask His healing for those who suffer from illness, for those who struggle in life. We ask His comfort for the victims of tragedy, and that the injured may be healed and the fallen may find comfort in the arms of their Creator. We implore His protection for those who protect us here at home and in far away lands. We pray for the day when His peace will reign in every nation and in every land until the ends of the earth.
The greatest gift we can offer anyone is the gift of our prayers, because our prayers have power beyond our imagining. The English poet Tennyson wrote, “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” Prayer has the power to change lives and to change the course of history. So on this National Day of Prayer, let us seek the Almighty with confidence and trust, because our Eternal Father inclines his ear to the voice of his children, and answers our needs with love.

Amen.

Bush’s Second Veto

2007-05-02T16:36:00.000-05:00

George W. Bush has issued his second veto of his Presidency. The first one was last summer on a bill which provided federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. The second is on a military-funding bill which sets a deadline for the start of U.S. troop withdrawals out of Iraq.

Here are the President’s reasons for vetoing the bill, despite the fact that it provides much-needed funding for War on Terror (bolded statements are my own emphases):

Here is why the bill Congress passed is unacceptable. First, the bill would mandate a rigid and artificial deadline for American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq. That withdrawal could start as early as July 1st. And it would have to start no later than October 1st, regardless of the situation on the ground.
It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing. All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength — and begin plotting how to overthrow the government and take control of the country of Iraq. I believe setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments. Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure — and that would be irresponsible.
Second, the bill would impose impossible conditions on our commanders in combat. After forcing most of our troops to withdraw, the bill would dictate the terms on which the remaining commanders and troops could engage the enemy. That means American commanders in the middle of a combat zone would have to take fighting directions from politicians 6,000 miles away in Washington, D.C. This is a prescription for chaos and confusion, and we must not impose it on our troops.
Third, the bill is loaded with billions of dollars in non-emergency spending that has nothing to do with fighting the war on terror. Congress should debate these spending measures on their own merits — and not as part of an emergency funding bill for our troops.
The Democratic leaders know that many in Congress disagree with their approach, and that there are not enough votes to override a veto. I recognize that many Democrats saw this bill as an opportunity to make a political statement about their opposition to the war. They’ve sent their message. And now it is time to put politics behind us and support our troops with the funds they need.

President Bush’s reasons for rejecting the bill are dead-on. It is utterly ridiculous for politicians to tell experienced generals how to run a war and to tell the enemy the timeframe on when we plan on retreating (that is what a withdrawal really is). Add to that billions of dollars in pork spending, and you have an all-around horrible bill.

I have stated before that I wish that the President would wield his veto pen more frequently, but I must say that when he does so, he does it for exactly the right reasons.

Still Working on “Mission Accomplished”

2007-05-01T12:54:00.000-05:00

The media has been reporting heavily (and negatively) on the fourth anniversary of President Bush’s so-called “Mission Accomplished” speech. For the unacquainted, that would be the one that George W. Bush gave aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on 2003 May 1, marking what was believed at the time to be the end of major combat operations in the country of Iraq. Of course, that turned out not to be the case, and anti-war liberals have derided the President for that speech for four years now.

It seems to matter little to the Bush-haters that the President never actually uttered the words “mission accomplished” and instead explicitly stated that the “mission continues.” While he did underestimate the growing insurgency in Iraq and falsely believed that the military combat was mostly over, the President made it clear in his speech that there was still “difficult work to do in Iraq” and that “the war on terror is not over.” But all the anti-war crowd seems to recollect about the event is the large “Misson Accomplished” banner which hung on the aircraft carrier and President Bush wearing a flight suit.

For those who prefer the truth to political spin, here are the highlights of what President Bush said four years ago:

My fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.
In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world. Our nation and our coalition are proud of this accomplishment — yet, it is you, the members of the United States military, who achieved it. Your courage, your willingness to face danger for your country and for each other, made this day possible. Because of you, our nation is more secure. Because of you, the tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free.
[…]
In the images of celebrating Iraqis, we have … seen the ageless appeal of human freedom. Decades of lies and intimidation could not make the Iraqi people love their oppressors or desire their own enslavement. Men and women in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air. Everywhere that freedom arrives, humanity rejoices; and everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.
We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We’re bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We’re pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We’re helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people.
The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq.
[…]
The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We’ve removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.
In these nineteen months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th — the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.
[…]
Our mission continues. Al Qaeda is wounded, not destroyed. The scattered cells of the terrorist network still operate in many nations, and we know from daily intelligence that they continue to plot against free people. The proliferation of deadly weapons remains a serious danger. The enemies of freedom are not idle, and neither are we. Our government has taken unprecedented measures to defend the homeland. And we will continue to hunt down the enemy before he can strike.
The war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide. No act of the terrorists will change our purpose, or weaken our resolve, or alter their fate. Their cause is lost. Free nations will press on to victory.
[…]
Those we lost were last seen on duty. Their final act on this Earth was to fight a great evil and bring liberty to others. All of you — all in this generation of our military — have taken up the highest calling of history. You’re defending your country, and protecting the innocent from harm. And wherever you go, you carry a message of hope — a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “To the captives, ‘come out,’ — and to those in darkness, ‘be free.’”

The White House, unabashed by the negative portrayals of the speech, still has the entire text available at its official web site. The speech is really a great one. For brevity’s sake, I actually omitted some of the best parts, talking about America’s historical commitment to liberty and placing the Iraq situation in perspective as it relates to America’s fight for freedom around the world. It is unfortunate that the speech has been so widely scorned because of the time at which it was given.

All those who have ridiculed the President, the flight suit, the banner, and the speech are right about one thing: the mission is not accomplished — yet. We are still working on that. But every day that we continue to fight for what it right and true, we get a little closer to our goal. And ultimately — if we do not lose hope — we will achieve a final victory against our evil enemy, and all the sacrifices will have been worth it.