Bill's Comments

I haven't visited PBS Watch lately. Today I did, and saw he had a series of posts that together make a powerful statement. Go visit and start scrolling down.

In keeping with the previous post, we have Gerard's take on the theme. Here is an exerpt:

Still there are always "differences of degree," and it is on those differences that one must judge. Weighing the two, it seems to me clear that there is, within the core of the current party in power, at least the recognition that "fun" is no longer what we need to be about at this time. Indeed, there is an understanding there, backed with deeds and policies, however flawed in conception and execution, that our holiday from history is over and we need to get back to business if we'd like to be around in any kind of recognizable form by mid-century. There is even, if you look at it closely, a distinct lessening of "Me" and the beginnings of an "Us" on the peripheries of the Party. Not a lot, but when you look at the other, there is none. Only a yearning for the warm mud of Me.

History as it will now unfold will require little from Me but much from Us. I'd like to say that this country's going one way or another tomorrow will be the ruin of the nation. If I could I would be able to get my Me into the Punditocracy. But that is false. One result or another will not be the ruin of the nation for there is, as one of the founding fathers once remarked, "A lot of ruin in a nation."

Should the nation choose to continue in the elections of this year to move forward, to stay the course and continue the offensive, our encounter with history will move forward at much the same pace as it has these past four years, perhaps a bit accelerated. Should the nation choose to step back, to retreat, it will simply retard the process that grips it a bit more than otherwise might be the case. Neither result wil place us back in the History of Me no matter how many yearn for it.

History, having returned, will continue to happen, not to Me, but to Us.

It is necessary to read the whole thing to get the full understanding of his approach. It is well worth the effort. As a fringe benefit, Gerard's prose is as good as his poetry.

Friday I wrote this, Yesterday the WSJ Opinion Journal published this, and today Peggy Noonan had this to say:

So far we are assimilating our immigrants economically, too. They come here and work. Good.

But we are not communicating love of country. We are not giving them the great legend of our country. We are losing that great legend.

What is the legend, the myth? That God made this a special place. That they're joining something special. That the streets are paved with more than gold--they're paved with the greatest thoughts man ever had, the greatest decisions he ever made, about how to live. We have free thought, free speech, freedom of worship. Look at the literature of the Republic: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist papers. Look at the great rich history, the courage and sacrifice, the house-raisings, the stubbornness. The Puritans, the Indians, the City on a Hill.

The genius cluster--Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, Franklin, all the rest--that came along at the exact same moment to lead us. And then Washington, a great man in the greatest way, not in unearned gifts well used (i.e., a high IQ followed by high attainment) but in character, in moral nature effortfully developed. How did that happen? How did we get so lucky? (I once asked a great historian if he had thoughts on this, and he nodded. He said he had come to believe it was "providential.")

We fought a war to free slaves. We sent millions of white men to battle and destroyed a portion of our nation to free millions of black men. What kind of nation does this? We went to Europe, fought, died and won, and then taxed ourselves to save our enemies with the Marshall Plan. What kind of nation does this? Soviet communism stalked the world and we were the ones who steeled ourselves and taxed ourselves to stop it. Again: What kind of nation does this?

Only a very great one. Maybe the greatest of all.

Do we teach our immigrants that this is what they're joining? That this is the tradition they will now continue, and uphold?

Do we, today, act as if this is such a special place? No, not always, not even often. American exceptionalism is so yesterday. We don't want to be impolite. We don't want to offend. We don't want to seem narrow. In the age of globalism, honest patriotism seems like a faux pas.

And yet what is true of people is probably true of nations: if you don't have a well-grounded respect for yourself, you won't long sustain a well-grounded respect for others.

Today I see the overall picture as if America has been on a long drunk or an extended high of pretending that the laws of economics and reality don't work. Right now we are in the sobering up phase. So the question becomes, do we continue to sober up and do what is necessary to get back into health, or do we go back to making-believe any wish no matter how unreal can be granted, that nothing requires work and effort to achieve.

I just added a new blog to the blog roll, "The Cave of the Curmudgeon." I found it from a comment he left to a post.

From Fox News comes this:

BALTIMORE — The Bush administration issued new rules Wednesday ratcheting up gas mileage requirements for pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and vans, for the first time covering the largest SUVs on the road like the Hummer H2 and Chevrolet Suburban.

The new fuel economy rules, covering 2008 through 2011, would save 10.7 billion gallons of fuel over the lifetime of the vehicles sold during the period and go further than an administration proposal issued last summer, officials said.

As usual the environmental activist groups praised it, and the worst the auto manufacturers would say (or the MSM would quote) was that it would create competitive problems.

Of course nobody in government or environmental activism believes in market forces or, if they do, wants to let them operate. It is always the attempt to suspend the laws of economics that create the messes. Use government edict to control the price of oil indirectly by trying to control consumption. It is trying to have their cake and eat it too. When the auto industry fails to produce needed or wanted heavy trucks and vehicles, no one will remember. Nor will they listen when told that two trips with a lighter vehicle create more consumption of gas than one with a big vehicle.

And so it goes on. Our leadership is just as naive about these issues as the people that elected them. Most of the leadership is the generation after me, and I watched their education become a shadow of what I had, and mine was a shadow of what my grandparents had for the equivalent level. It's not the greening but the dumbing of America.

As a followup to my post "The Final Cut, or W, What Have We Done?" is this item from the WSJ Opinion Journal. At the very least our course in the Middle East is much harder, and at the worst a much larger-scale horribly expensive war, with not only severe US military casualties, but also US civilian casualities. We will win, but the cost will be almost unbearable before it is over.

Read this. NOW.

This week in the Weekly Standard online edition, the Dutch practice of killing infants on medical grounds was carefully compared to the Hitler euthanasia program. It simply confirms my post on the same topic over a year ago.
Here is the opening of the article:

AT LAST A HIGH GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL in Europe got up the nerve to chastise the Dutch government for preparing to legalize infant euthanasia. Italy's Parliamentary Affairs minister, Carlo Giovanardi, said during a radio debate: "Nazi legislation and Hitler's ideas are reemerging in Europe via Dutch euthanasia laws and the debate on how to kill ill children."

Unsurprisingly, the Dutch, ever prickly about international criticism of their peculiar institution, were outraged. Giovanardi's critique cut so deeply that even Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende felt the need to respond, sniffing, "This [Giovanardi's assertion] is scandalous and unacceptable. This is not the way to get along in Europe."

As is often the case in the New Europe, what is said matters more than what is done. Thus, the prime minister of the Netherlands thinks that killing babies because they are born with terminal or seriously disabling conditions is not a scandal, but daring to point out accurately that German doctors did the same during World War II, is.

Notice the attempted suppression of criticism. No debate, no counter, just condemnation for telling the truth. Sounds depressingly familiar and serves as another warning concerning the loss of human rights, specifically the right to life, and how it is accomplished.

Moses and the Serpent
This week's Old Testament lesson created a lot of questions and few or no answers at the Men's Breakfast this week.

Numbers 21:4-9
4 From Mount Hor [the Israelites] set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way.
5 The people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food."
6 Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.
7 The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for hte people.
8 And the Lord said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten whall look at it and live."
9 So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

First a general comment: understanding the Pentateuch, (or Torah), is extremely complex, as witness the Talmud, which is a commentary on the Torah and is many times greater in size than the Torah. Part of the problem is determining how much is truly historical, and how much is changed with time and telling, and how much is additional for purposes of spiritual meaning. Considering there are only six verses, there is a wealth of complexity.

There is a problem of theodicy, since the writers of Numbers considered EVERYTHING to be under the control of God, and therefore to some purpose. So what was the purpose of punishing a miserable people further with serpents? There is a problem of whether there is a violation of the prohibition of the worship of idols, with the brass serpent on a pole. For that matter if there is no food and water, why do they detest the "miserable food?"

Taking the cheap shots first, verse 6 sounds rather like an impatient parent that tells the kid, "Quite crying or I'll give you something to cry about. You don't like the food--how about poisonous snakes." Putting a brass serpent on the pole is a way of providing a solution for the problem without getting rid of the problem. [Resembles left/liberal solutions to problems.] But it also serves as a reminder that they could be punished again, much as a parent may keep a paddle visible or easily accessible [I grew up when it was OK to spank your kids.].

Taking it a level deeper, blaming God for the serpents is due to the belief that He does everything. If we remove God as doing everything, in other words, natural evil is outside His control, then the serpents just happened, and maybe around the time of nasty food. [Another common problem in this area is that the further back in time we go the more it gets compressed in the telling. Centuries become a few years or even less in the story.] To deal with the problem of worship of an idol, we can split hairs and say that looking upon the idol is not the same as worshipping it. It is merely following God's orders. He would not have the Israelites worship any God other than Himself. And besides, there is no indication that there were any prayers or petitions given to the idol. One simply looked at it, if one were bitten.

One of the pastors at the breakfast had read in a commentary, that there was a parasitic worm, that was the size of a snake. This worm would bore into the skin of the legs, and the only way to remove it was to take a stick with a split on the end, and grab the end of the worm, twist it around the stick, and pull it out. The brass serpent on a pole may be the oral tradition of a representation of the cure for the problem--a way to show people how it was done.

John in the Gospel for the day, John 3:14-21, directly references the story saying that Jesus was lifted up on the cross in the same manner that the serpent was lifted up to save life, in this case spiritual. [I am becoming fascinated by the recurring themes in the Bible. I interpret them less as sequence and historical repitition than as borrowing to fill out a story line.]

I don't have a final conclusion on this story. In keeping with my beliefs, I think the serpents, whatever they were, were simply bad luck, an amoral hazard having nothing to do with the Israelites complaints. As for the brass serpent, the interpretation of the parasitic worm works, but I don't find it overwhelming. It is something I would like to read about further on my own. It seems plausible but not compelling without more evidence.

This is a great story, whether true or false.

Thanks to Dr. Sanity for the link at Carnival of the Insanities.

With apologies to Pink Floyd for the title of this post, I could not resist, having read this:

Yet there's no denying the polls showing that most Americans are increasingly weary of the daily news of car bombs and Iraqi squabbling and are wishing it would all just go away. Their pessimism is fed by elites who should know better but can't restrain their domestic political calculations long enough to consider the damage that would accompany U.S. failure. A conventional military defeat is inconceivable in Iraq, but a premature U.S. withdrawal is becoming all too possible.

The America of today could not win WW II. We wouldn't be able to endure long enough. It is as if our wonderful technology has robbed us of something else, the ability to hold out. We have become so used to everything happening quickly that we don't have any patience. We give our children everything when they want it, then wonder why they don't plan or work for success. The education system gives grades without the work to attain them. We have an hysterical obsession with self-esteem--because we don't earn it.

We have lost our common sense in the meaning of a set of values and ideas held in common. We have also lost it in the more usual meaning as well. We read or listen to the crap spewed by the MSM, and have no way of realizing that it is self-serving inanity. We have lost our sense of outrage that would have never let a Ward Churchill gain any credibility. At one time we knew treason when we saw it and reacted accordingly. We lost that ability when we let Jane Fonda, John Kerry, and Ramsey Clark slide on their treason over Vietnam. The only thing that saves us from the multicultural hell that Europe is becoming, is 3000 miles of Atlantic Ocean. It does take more effort to get here. We certainly don't filter out anything that does get here. Instead we are on our way to a tricultural hell--Red, Blue, and Hispanic.

Watching President Bush, I am struck that he really is a good stand-in for The United States as a whole, often contradictory, uncertain, and failing as often as succeeding. Part of his poor ratings at the moment are that we are seeing ourselves in him. We want him to do better at it than we can. It doesn't make any difference which side of the political spectrum we are on, the President is supposed to make it happen regardless. After all, we no longer are able to do it for ourselves. Independence is suppressed at an early age--destroyed, if possible.

If there is hope, it is in our grandchildren. Our children are more corrupt than we. There is an expression, "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations." It refers to the history of self-made wealth. But the concept could also apply to other generational changes. I have seen some articles indicating that our grandchildren are more responsible, more self-motivated, and less willing to let someone else do for them or tell them what to think. Perhaps they have seen our excesses and learned. I certainly hope so.

This is a story of a good deed by the US Marines. Go read it.

Thanks to TCS for spreading it.

I just read the press release(s) relating to the release of the three hostages in Iraq. All emotional over being released, but not one word of thanks to the people that got them out. In fact, they once again blamed the coalition forces for the problems in Iraq.

They should have left their sorry asses to rot.

Thanks to Drudge for the link.

Over the past few years the politicizing of the judiciary has become obvious, in particular in Senate confirmation hearings, where so-called "litmus tests", single-issue decisions, are often brought into play. As this article in the daily edition of The Weekly Standard, shows, the process has become very entrenched at the district and appellate levels of confirmations.

But what the low caliber of these nominees helps demonstrate is the extraordinary and regrettable influence senators exercise over federal judgeships in their home states.

...

For all the attention given to the Democratic filibuster of judicial nominees in recent years, the greater impediment to President Bush's ability to appoint high-quality practitioners of judicial restraint to the federal district and appellate courts comes from obscure Senate practices that enjoy widespread bipartisan support from senators. These practices exist because they serve the narrow interests of individual senators. They are, in short, perquisites of membership in the club known as the United States Senate.

...

This influence can manifest itself in two ways: first, through the Senate Judiciary Committee's blue-slip policy, which serves primarily as a tool of senators in the party opposite the president's; and second, through the entrenched attitude of same-party senators that they have a virtual right to designate judicial nominees in their states.

...

The Constitution provides that the president "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint" federal judges. The syntax of this provision makes clear that the power to nominate lies exclusively with the president and that the constitutional role of the Senate comes into play after the president makes a nomination. As Alexander Hamilton stated in Federalist 66: "It will be the office of the President to nominate, and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint. There will, of course, be no exertion of choice on the part of the Senate. They may defeat one choice of the Executive, and oblige him to make another; but they cannot themselves choose--they can only ratify or reject the choice he may have made."

But the practical reality has long been very different. Senators of the same party as the president regularly claim the right to select district-court nominees in their states, and presidents, including President Bush, largely acquiesce in these claims. Presidents are free to engage in whatever prenomination consultation they find expedient, and I am certainly not contending that the role that senators have seized is unconstitutional. But, as Hamilton explained in Federalist 76, senators' involvement in the choice of nominees multiplies the prospect that "personal considerations" will be given undue weight at the expense of qualifications. As the Bunning nomination exemplifies, senators have undermined the advantages in quality that Hamilton recognized should flow from having "sole and undivided responsibility" for nominations vested in the president.

Indeed, a senator selecting judicial nominees will naturally be inclined to regard the occasion as one more opportunity to dispense patronage to supporters. ...

Go read the rest.

Forgiveness
I have posted on this before--turning the other cheek and forgiving. The interpretations I provided in previous posts focused on the relationship between the forgiver and the forgiven. But in turning the other cheek there is a more subtle issue that was emphasized at the men's retreat this year--in turning the other cheek one is making a point that one has not gone away, one is still there to be dealt with. There are instances where it actually becomes a form of agression and one that can hardly be answered.

An example is in order: one has a fight with ones signficant other, not just a shouting match, but one of those deadly go for the jugular kind of things. After a period of time (a few minutes to several hours) the person attacked goes about showing they love and care as if nothing had happened. What is the agressor left with? Evidence they have hurt? Do hurt people take care of those that hurt them? (In this case, yes, but there are other circumstances) Evidence they have won? Nothing has changed. Self-righteousness over the counter-attack? There was no counter-attack. Somewhere, if the agressor is normally sane, they are faced with the excesses of their attack, and the need to make amends. Done appropriately this is powerful stuff.

Today in TCS, there is an excellent article on the dangers of a new movement to re-regulate the shipping of coal. Energy producers want the government to force a lower price for shipping coal to offset other cost increases. Just when things are on-track (pun intentional) the government and a lobby want to derail them.

Considering the often high-handed and arbitrary nature of public school administration, there might be some excuse for this behavior, but when we see the extremes it goes to, I say it is not excusable. It becomes the hand-maiden of the failure of children to succeed.

Thanks to Drudge for the link.

UPDATE: I just corrected the spelling and grammar in this post. If I keep on like that, I will become as bad as Blabs Streisand.

Over the past few weeks, I have been able to finally put my library up in bookshelves. Some parts of it have been in boxes for 20 years or more. The greatest joy is to have all my favorite authors available again. My fiction collection is not well-rounded by any means. I find an author I like, and I buy everything they produce. I have almost complete Dale Brown and Frederick Forsythe set, a complete Horatio Hornblower series, a complete PD James, Martha Grimes, Ngiao Marsh, Ellis Peter's Brother Cadfael series, etc. I am having a wonderful time re-reading them after all these years.

One of the things that struck me about my reading is that all books that I like have one or both of two characteristics, (and thinking about it, the first subsumes the second) heroism and clear values. The war and Navy stories have real heroes, men who perform outstanding achievements by following their training and values to the end. The detective stories beside producing an interesting puzzle, which, truth to tell, I never work very hard at solving before the denouement, are predicated on a clear set of principles, for if otherwise where is the crime and outrage?

The desire for values clearly demonstrated may explain such things as the success of the Law and Order shows or the CSI shows. There are valid reasons to act as the characters act. There is an obvious bad guy out there and the central characters are determined to get him (or her). Our self-styled intellectual elite sneer at such simple approaches to life. (Yet use them for their own purposes, casting those they don't like in the roles of villians.) Rather than clear-cut good and bad, they consider ethics to be relative and nuanced. Look at what wins the awards in the performing arts compared to what makes money. Contrary to impressions, it is the G, PG, and PG-13 movies that make the most money, not the R-rated movies. Again it has to do with values.

But what is going to happen in the future when we have a society composed of immigrants that have no knowledge of our historical heroes, and a native-born population that has been educated without heroes or ethics and has been made to feel ashamed of their own goodness. We are already seeing part of the result. Rock stars, rappers, sports figures are taken as role models, and soldiers and businessmen condemned or belittled. Feelings not thought are the standard of behavior. What will we become when we condemn the protection of our freedom, and persecute the source of our wealth?

Philosophy is important in all our lives, and we now see the results of allowing a philosophy of collectivism and scientism to attain control.

This seems a good time to put down my views on immigration and the current mess we are in.

First of all, immigration is necessary for the survival of this country. We depend on immigrants for:
1. a pool of unskilled, entry-level people
2. growth in the population, since many Americans are not producing enough children to even merely replace themselves
3. new ideas and ways of looking at things to avoid falling into a technologicl and cultural rut.

Uncontrolled and illegal immigration is dangerous to our society:
1. large numbers of people receive no information about the way our society works and therefore do not contribute to maintaining it
2. large numbers of non-English-speaking people create major strains on public and private services and resources.
3. illegal immigrants do not pay taxes to support the services they receive--they ride for free, creating a drain that harms those who are more deserving
4. much of the money they earn returns to their native country not to their host nation
5. uncontrolled immigration and open borders allow the flow of drugs, arms, and potential terrorists into this country.

We talk about the number of illegal immigrants in this country and estimate them to be about 11 million. That's not necessarilly 11 million working people, but I would imagine that well over half of them are employed. This means that there are at least that many jobs available in the job market for them. If we suddenly threw them all out, we would suffer severe economic consequences. Many of the jobs would go unfilled and the price paid to fill the others would cause a rise in prices. Even wages, when unions aren't involved, follow simple supply and demand economics.

Because of bloc politics, Hispanics are viewed by both political parties as a single monolithic group that wants immigration as easy as possible, and that to do anything substantive to curb illegal immigration would be disasterous. From my reading this is pure bull****. Legal Hispanics resent the illegals as much as native-born caucasians.

The approaches proposed so far seem piecemeal. There is no planning, simply political posturing or fire-fighting along the border.

The most critical thing to do is to stop the flow of illegal immigrants. If it means militarizing the border, so be it. Actually from what I have read recently, the Border Patrol is facing elements of the Mexican Army across the border now. If so, we need to get it on an equal footing. It would not surprise me that the Mexican Army is supporting drug running and illegal immigration. It brings income into Mexico and allows Vincente Fox to avoid doing anything about the corruption in Mexico. Instead of enforcing law and property rights, he just sends the problems to the US. Build walls, add patrols, used technology, use volunteers. The Minutemen were effective.

Second, increase the quotas significantly. We need the laborers, but we need them to be legal and paying taxes, and we want them to assimilate, not live in a modern version of a ghetto.

Make a genuine and lasting effort to identify ALL illegal immigrants. Once found, if they have a clean record, give them amnesty but require them to register and pay taxes, and give them a deadline for becoming citizens or leaving. Get rid of permanent visas. For situations where a permanent visa might be desireable, allow periodic renewals with review. If they don't have a clean record, ship them home immediately.

Get rid of ALL English-as-a-second-language programs in schools. Emerse the children and adults in English and they will learn. This has been demonstrated in Las Vegas. The casinos have English classes as part of the training for dealers. They are hard and have a high success rate for adults, and children learn languages much easier than adults.

Generally quit patronizing immigrants. They don't need us to re-inforce the culture they left. THEY LEFT IT, there must be a good reason or reasons. It is funny that all the various European immigrants were even discriminated AGAINST, and managed to become successful and assimilated. At the same time they kept the parts of their culture they wanted. We molycoddle illegals and they huddle in enclaves and never become successful. Immigrants are not victims. They were smart enough to realize that the US offered far more opportunity than they had at home and took action to get here. Often risking their lives.

GET RID OF THIS CONSTANT USE OF SPANISH AS AN ALTERNATIVE LANQUAGE IN COMMERCE AND BUSINESS. This is the US. We speak a version of English. That should be the only language in official business and government business.

Considering the number of non-English-speaking people we come across daily, there is a major need for their services. I just want them provided by legal immigrants that can speak English or at least are learning English.

Right Questions, Wrong Conclusions
Question: Is there a God?
My Answer: Yes.
Question: Prove it.
Answer: It can't be proven.
Conclusion: If it can't be proven then it doesn't exist.
Angngt! NOT!

Other Conclusion: Whether it can be proven or not, I believe He exists.
Secondary Conclusion: If He exists, then He is all powerful and made everything.
Angngt! NOT!

For the first mistake, failure to prove existence does not constitute proof of non-existence. For the second mistake, assumption of properties does not make them so.

Encapsulated in the two mistakes above is the essence of the ID/Evolutionism debate. The one side denies God for lack of objective proof, and the other side and attempts to justify their assumptions with science. The difficulty with both sides is that belief in God neither requires Him to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, nor does it negate anything that has been demonstrated by science and the scientific method.

The difficulties appear when one tries to deal with morality. Those who commit the first mistake, end up with a moral vacuum that must be filled in some way from outside their system, since the creation of ethics cannot be done with the scientific method, Daniel Dennett not withstanding. Those who commit the second mistake end up with all the difficulties of Theodicy and the problem of natural evil.

Hence the middle ground of my beliefs. God exists and provides a quiet, moral direction when we look for it. He has provided his prophets with answers and lessons through the ages. He does His work by suggestion and guidance not by force. Experiencing that guidance can be overwhelming, to the point of not arguing, at least at the time. But there is always the choice of not agreeing and the consequences of the choice.

An Interesting Speculation
Note to the unwary: I am often heretical and would have been burned many times over in the Middle Ages. This next bit is as heretical as I have ever been in the past. You have been warned.

Let us suppose that what we refer to as God, is the sum of all the souls that have died and were generally good. Let us furthere suppose that over time as more souls enter the union, they bring additional knowledge and wisdom, which is integrated across all the entities in the Godhead. This would imply that as time progresses, God would become both wiser and possibly more powerful.

But what would be the power of God in such a case? Based on what I have written previously, it would be an increasing power to convince people to do right. The ability of souls to communicate with the living is limited both as to strength of interaction and the number of people who are receptive. In the cases where the person is receptive but unable to detect extremely weak interactions, a God of increasing strength would have increasing influence.

My own view of history is that overall, mankind is becoming more moral. Because of the nature of human beings, that progress is very uneven over time, place, and belief systems. But that parallels my hypothesized increase in the strength of God. So, is the increasing goodness of man due to an increasing influence from God as He becomes more powerful?

Part of a conversation I had with the Maverick Philosopher a while back briefly touched on the topic of crude oil. Bill asked me what I thought about the idea that crude oil was not a biologically derived resource like coal. At the time, I had not considered the truth or falseness of the question, but had seen some reports on a theory that crude oil was produced in the interior of the earth from carbon that was not originally living. If this were true, it would indicate that our potential crude oil resources were far greater than we imagine.

I have not read sufficiently on this to form an opinion, but there are some interesting questions that could be asked.
1) What isotopes are present in the oil that might be considered for dating, and what do they show about the age of oil deposits.
2) What are the elemental ratios of carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur, and are they in the range of what would be compatible with life as an origin
2a) Are the isotope ratios of carbon, oxygen, or any other element skewed in the way they are from living things
3) [this might be the most telling] How much biomass would have had to be generated and transformed to create the known historic usage as well as the known reserves, and the estimated unknown reserves.
4) Once the answer to three is known, what could create enough mass to be transformed into oil.
5) Are there multiple sources of oil, e.g., some is biological in origin and some is non-biological in origin

The idea of oil being non-biological would open up new theory as to how it is formed, and from that new places to search could result. Might even put a stop to a lot of problems from both the environmentatlists and from our dependency on foreign oil.

Everyday when I am home, I pass the huge centralized high school, jr. high, and intermediate schools for our community, the last is undergoing a major expansion, and the first is already considered too small. I also see the time children spend on busses and the costs of bussing. I keep asking why? Wouldn't the job be done better in the smaller schools like I attended?

Lo and behold, yesterday's cover story in the money section of USA Today was, "Schools take a lesson from big business" with the sub-headline, "Decentralizing helps when organizations get unwieldy."

...some school systems are recoginzing that principals know their neighborhoods. Decentralilzation, often called autonomy, takes illions of dollars away from superintendents and the legions of cental office minions and turns it ovr to those schools and principals.

The movement goes back 30 years to Edmonton, Alberta, where principals today control over 92% of the money, and local voters have consistently indicated in school board elections that they will have it no other way.

The remainder of the article discusses the various attitudes concerning this. As might be expected, entrenched power is against it. And there are plenty of spin quotes in both directions.

I'm for it. I think decentralizing would give the parents more control and would greatly increase accountability.

Today's USA Today had an article on President Bush's enthusiastic comments on faith-based administration of government assistance. The sub-headline was, "Groups now receive more than $2.1B a year from the federal government." $2.1 billion is a lot of money and it is good that it is being administered this way, since the results are generally better than in the past. I can't help asking though, how much was spent on the bureaucracy before the $2.1 billion made it down to the recepients? If it is typical of large charities, 10% or less actually made it to the recipient.

Get the government out of welfare. Less money than is currently spent in taxes would go much further. Welfare programs are over half the federal budget. If we cut our taxes by half, then 10% of that could go directly to the faith-based programs via donations, and everybody would be ahead.

Yesterday's USA Today had an article talking about $3.2 billion that the State of California is providing in rebates to ease the cost of solar energy. Just like hybrid cars, solar energy is uneconomic (21 cents per KW vs. 9 cents for natural gas and 5 cents for coal) so to make it at all attractive the government has to subsidize it.

The lead paragraph describes someone selling electricity back to the grid from the solar panels on his house. However, we have no idea how much the panels cost either in subsidized terms or in real terms. Thus, we cannot make an intelligent guess as to whether it really pays or not. There is also a nice graphic that shows how solar energy went from $1 per KW in 1980 to about 30 cents in 1992, but they don't talk about the fact that from 1992 to 2006 it has only dropped another 9 cents.

All the hype in the world won't change economics. Based on my general background in science and technology I would say that the current solar technology is probably exhausted. It won't become economic without a new major discovery or development in the conversion of light to electricity. Subsidizing the current technology is counter-productive, it just entrenches it making further development more costly to implement since the old technology will have to be displaced.

The title gives my four-word judgment on "Brokeback Mountain." What is supposed to be so important about this movie? It's about gay men? That has been done before and goes on as a niche market. It's a big budget production? Doesn't prove a thing, a lot of big budget productions are meaningless. I can't find anything about it that makes it worthy of all the discussion it has received.

However, I can speculate as to why the attention is being given--an attempt to bring homosexuality, specifically male homosexuality, closer to acceptance. I am being very careful in my word choice here. Acceptance does not equate to tolerance. The latter is simply leaving alone. Acceptance contains a willingness to associate with or even approve of behavior.

Let me say again what I have said before: I don't care what two consenting adults do with each other in the privacy of their home or motel room. I also don't want to know about it. I don't care. I don't ask and they shouldn't tell. I won't treat them any differently from knowing, I just don't need my time and energy wasted with dealing with it.

The current obsession with homosexuality provides a cover-up for the lack of ability to deal with substantive issues that effect everyone. It is emotionally charged enough to get plenty of attention--attention that should be spent on real issues such as what to do about Islam and radical Islamists.

Tolerance of non-heterosexual people has been around so long it is a non-issue. So this movie is much ado about nothing.

I was surprised at how strong an emotion was triggered by a simple description of WW II history and a couple of exerpts from a poem. Go read this and receive some insight.

Welcome to democratic methods of solving problems. As has been said, it's the worst way to govern, except for all the other ways. Notice no matter how messy it gets, it never gets completely out of hand? The only difference between Iraqi politics and US politics is we have had 200+ years to polish our technique. The battles are waged just as fiercely. Perhaps even more so in the US, we aren't all headed in the same direction of building a country. Some of us are intent in destroying what is already built.

Today in USA Today, there was a front page article on the use of corporate airplanes to provide travel for members of Congress. The article made clear that politicians received a benefit about ten times greater than the money they paid as reimbursements (first class airfare equivalents). What struck me was that there is a great hue and cry to limit such travel, but never once has someone said that Congress shouldn't be making laws about some of the things they do.

......is never suggested.

Of course if Congress backed out of regulating our lives, they couldn't have their cake and eat it too--creating unenforceable laws appearing to regulate their perks from lobbiests and others, while continuing to enjoy them.

This was sent to me by a friend:

Iranian negotiator boasts of fooling Europeans

By Philip Sherwell in Washington
March 6, 2006

THE man who for two years led Iran's nuclear negotiations has laid out in unprecedented detail how the regime took advantage of talks with Britain, France and Germany to forge ahead with its secret atomic program.

In a speech to a closed meeting of leading Islamic clerics and academics, Hassan Rowhani, who headed talks with the so-called EU3 until last year, revealed how Tehran played for time and tried to dupe the West after its secret nuclear program was uncovered by the Iranian opposition in 2002.

He boasted that while talks were taking place in Tehran, Iran was able to complete the installation of equipment for conversion of yellowcake - a key stage in the nuclear fuel process - at its Isfahan plant while convincing European diplomats that nothing was afoot.

"From the outset, the Americans kept telling the Europeans, 'The Iranians are lying and deceiving you and they have not told you everything'. The Europeans used to respond, 'We trust them'," he said.

Revelation of Mr Rowhani's remarks comes at an awkward moment for the Iranian Government, before a meeting today of the United Nations atomic watchdog, which must make a fresh assessment of Iran's banned nuclear operations. The International Atomic Energy Agency's judgement is the final step before the case is passed to the UN Security Council, where sanctions may be considered.

In his address to the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, Mr Rowhani appears to have been seeking to rebut criticism from hardliners that he gave too much ground in talks with the Europeans. The contents of the speech were published in a regime journal that circulates among the ruling elite.

He told his audience: "When we were negotiating with the Europeans in Tehran we were still installing some of the equipment at the Isfahan site … In reality, by creating a tame situation, we could finish Isfahan."

America and its European allies believe that Iran is clandestinely developing an atomic bomb, but Tehran insists it is merely seeking nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Iran's negotiating team engaged in a last-ditch attempt last week to head off Security Council involvement. In January the regime removed atomic energy agency seals on sensitive nuclear equipment and last month it resumed banned uranium enrichment.

Iran is trying to win support from Russia, which opposes UN sanctions, having tried unsuccessfully to persuade European Union leaders to allow it more time. Against this backdrop, Mr Rowhani's surprisingly candid comments on Iran's record of obfuscation and delay are illuminating.

In a separate development, the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran has obtained a copy of a confidential parliamentary report making it clear that Iranian MPs were also kept in the dark on the nuclear program, which was funded secretly, outside the normal budgetary process.

But I thought Iran was peaceful, and being a religious state not liars. I also believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.

The oxymoron of my title to this post is the only way I can create a shorthand for the phenomenon described in this essay. Here are the final paragraphs.

Rational problem-solving generally requires adhering to the rules of the game, and in politics those rules are often informal. One such rule in Washington is that a politician is as good as his word. Perhaps nothing has been more destructive to Washington's current ability to function than the belief that "Bush lied" about WMD, most notably Joe Wilson's foundational charge in the New York Times that Mr. Bush lied about Iraq's attempts to buy uranium from Niger.

This persistent belief that George Bush committed a major moral crime, which was refuted by the Robb-Silberman Commission, had consequences. It has led many people in Washington's standing institutions--Congress, the press, the intelligence and foreign-policy bureaucracies--to think they've been released from operating inside the normal boundaries that allow political Washington to function, that allow partisans to do business, whether on foreign policy, Social Security or homeland security.

Over the Bush years that code has been displaced by a new ethos that to resist policies that flowed from such a "lie," anything goes--such as leaks about the most sensitive national security programs or published "dissents" by recently retired CIA officials like Paul Pillar. Compare this ethos to that of the U.S. intelligence community that ran the Venona program, producing invaluable signals intelligence on Soviet espionage activities from 1943 onward without any participant revealing its existence. No such achievement is imaginable now.

Instead every issue that emerges becomes an illegitimate extension of the original "lie"--the NSA wiretaps, the Guantanamo detentions, Abu Ghraib, terrorist interrogation techniques, the Plame affair. This is a dangerous game. Raised to this level, policy becomes a super-heated moral Armageddon that makes mere politics impossible to manage. One then might ask: Do you want this government to fail? To which a tragicomic response is appropriate: Are you insane?

I consider such hyper-reactions to supposed immorality as being immoral themselves, because they are motivated not by principle but by "gotcha." Principle would consider the impact on the overall functioning of the government, not simply scream at every perceived misstep.

I have a different take on the sentencing of Zacarias Moussaoui. Yes, in terms of his culpability in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he deserves to die. But that is exactly what he wants. Then he becomes a martyr and gets his 72 virgins. Instead, lock him up with no possiblility of parole and make sure he doesn't get killed in prison -- max security with solitary sounds good to me. He is punished, and considering his outlook vs the liberals, the liberals get a win on the death penalty that to him would be cruel and unusual.

Comments invited.

This is the most in-depth item I have seen on the attendance at Yale of a former Taliban leader. Despite being on the op-ed pages it is an excellent piece of reporting. The Ivy League, at least its two most famous members, Harvard and Yale, is on its way to total non-relevancy to the American way of life, or any way of life for that matter.

As a side-note, I have noted for years that op-ed pages often contain more information than the news pages. This is one of the better examples of this phenomenon.

You should learn Japanese You should learn Japanese. You are very practical, and enjoy setting goals for yourself. You feel very rewarded when you accomplish something big.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Thanks to my friend, Peg, for the link.

That I am writing Sunday Notes again may be the best indication I have regained my health.

On Christian Behavior:
Today we were going into Bob Evans for breakfast after church, and we passed a group of people obviously in Sunday Church Wear--suits and flowered dresses. They were having a serious discussion just to look at them, and one of them had a sheet of paper showing with multiple colors of highlighter on it, green, yellow, and pink. My wife has some of the sharpest ears I have ever come across, and she said they were discussing kicking someone out of the church, and quoting scripture.

On the surface of it, this is very troubling to me. It may be that the person was so heretical or defiant in his/her beliefs that there was no doubt that the ejection should occur, but in that case I would expect there to be no debate. Since there was a debate, I would venture that it was more a matter of they didn't like this person for some reason, were trying to find justification for what they wanted to do, and knew at some level they were wrong.

It never fails to amaze me, that, as forgiving and as open as Jesus was to those who were sinners, so many people who claim to follow his teachings are so self-righteous and judgmental. The group mentioned above was today's example. The church I belonged to before my current church needed to evangelize to stay alive, yet what they wanted was only people like themselves. They never stopped to think that the people like themselves were already church members, and that Jesus had a reputation of associating with undesirables--tax collectors, laborers, prostitutes or at least women of less than sterling virtue. Evangelism requires allowing those not like oneself into association, not sitting in judgment on them.

We host the homeless families in two weeks at our church, and my wife and I were talking with another parishoner about including the families in our Lenten supper, instead of providing a separate meal for them. My wife related that other churches that do this do it in such a way as it is a thorough humiliation. They make them come to the Lenten supper, then point them out specifically as the homeless families, make them server themselves first, and make them eat up front where everyone can see them.

THIS IS NOT CHARITY OR BEING KIND TO THE POOR, as Jesus commanded. Our Gospel lesson last week discussed how one should hide ones prayers, and fasting, and giving, so that the reward was in Heaven, not the praise of those on earth. To do as these churches have done is to say, "Look how good we are," not to give in a charitable manner. They used those in difficult straits and embarassed about it to further their own self-image. Another version of this was Ted Turner about a year or two ago, when he made a big splash about how he was going to give many millions of dollars to charity over 10 years. The press lapped it up and made headlines of the total. Truth to tell, many other extremely rich persons give that much every year and say little or nothing about it.

Virtue is in doing what is right quietly, because it is right, not because it makes one look good.

Belonging to a Church
We belong to a small- to medium-sized church (about 120 families). We know everyone that attends regularly, and many of those who come less frequently. We are active and enjoy the companionship of the church members. What struck me though, was that when I was sick, the church rallied around me in so many ways. There were constant prayers for my progress, visits to the hospital, get well cards, phone calls, and emails. When I returned to church the obvious joy that everyone felt that I was well-enough to come to church, was almost overwhelming. Whatever part one wishes to credit for it, I think this attention had the effect of helping me get well faster.

The upshot is that if one belongs to an inclusive and loving church, and works within it as best one can, one will be repayed in greater measure than was put in. It doesn't happen because it is expected, it happens because people are basically good and want to do the right thing. Church is a place where one gives as much as possible, willingly, without consideration for a return. When the crunch is on, what is given will be returned many fold as necessary.

is what I feel about my middle son. We just got back from Florida this afternoon. My middle son graduated from NAVYSCOLEOD--US Navy School for Explosive Ordinance Demolition--yesterday morning. He was in a class of 11 that started with 17. It is tough, they typically wash out 30+%, and that is after carefully selecting the class to begin with. I got to see the class room--about ten acres of it, which was only a very small part. They have examples of every type of explosive ordinance that they might come across, and even displays on the walls of WW II ordinance. Imagine an area the size of several football fields with some sort of shell or rocket every 20-30 feet. Or another area with the shells of several fighter planes with every possible armament hanging from them. We also saw the robots they use in neutralizing IEDs, and some of the displays of the ways IEDs can be rigged.

Once I got an idea of how intense this school was, I was even more impressed and proud. And this is just a start, the basics. Now he does jump school and tac school to learn to parachute from an airplane and rope down from and climb back onto hovering helicopters as well as use small arms. Then he will be stationed in VA and deployed, most likely to Iraq. Before each deployment he has to study even more the specifics of what it will involve. He can be deployed with ships, marines, land forces, special ops forces, or any group that may run across explosives or need to use explosives.

I don't know how we would deal with losing another son, if it happens, but I would far rather he do what he wants with his life even if it is high risk, than to be bored and miserable.

I am proud.