I blow stuff up for a living

How to be a hipster Christian (or Pastor)

2011-07-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

While remarking on my Pastor's use of technology the other day, as well as his revelation that he was going to switch to the iPhone from Android for extremely dubious reasons, I thought to myself all of the times that I have assisted pastors/churches, and how often they have burned me for having done so. (THAT's an AWESOME run-on sentence.)

To further add to the mix, I've been having conversations with people from other churches in the area, in which the church (or pastor) has tried to spiritualize their attempts to make the church "cool." It was then that I realized: There is a huge drive to try to make Church edgy by approximating the hipster stereotype, which has resulted in a weird mix.

This is a "how-to" guide in how to be the new church. Remember, you aren't part of the new "cool church" unless you fit into this mold:

Section 1: Music

1) You are free to like classic rock as much as you want. However, when it comes to CCM, you are required to find the most obscure band or artist. You are then to claim that they are good enough to herald the second coming of Christ through music. While you cannot use "corporate" or "sell-out" in a Christian environment, feel free to use "not as spiritually motivating" or "doesn't speaks to me" to describe anyone who expresses interest in any mainstream CCM artist. Also, be sure to treat them in a manner suggesting that maybe they just aren't in tune with the movings of The Holy Spirit as you due to their choice of music.

2) Picking friends with similar musical interests. In the name of "reaching out", you will find the most apathetic music listener possible. Find something secular, non-threatening, but somewhat obscure to express mutual interest in. Muse used to be a common one, but they have succeeded, and are now "corporate". Get together with your MIB (Mutual Interest Buddy), and talk about your mutual interests like 13 year old fangirls. Anyone who tries to tell you that the emperor has no clothes is to be looked upon dubiously.

Section 2: Technology

3) You are required to love Apple. Whether you claim to like it in an "ironic", fashion or decide to cross into serious fanboi territory, anything that has an "i" in front of it shall be fawned over like a newborn baby by her helicopter mother. If Apple has stated that they have better technology, claim it as fact. You are not required to have in-depth knowledge of the actual functional differences, but rather, parrot Apple's, and Steve Jobs' addresses and press releases like a mother robin puking up a meal for its offspring. His word is to be treated as god-breathed. If anyone comes up with good reasons as to why a non-Apple product is better, you are required to say that you feel it is easier to use, regardless of having actually used a competitor's product. In that way, you never have to admit that a non-Apple product is superior, and ass-raping your wallet. Which leads us to:

4) Outsourcing technological efforts. As a pastor, you are to be busy hanging out in your local coffee shop (preferred) or Starbucks (just to be ironic), "working on your message". Due to spending all your time coming up with cool promotional materials for your pet church outing, you may need to outsource some of the technological needs of the church to some of the parishioners. If nobody springs to mind, you can give it to the people that know more about what you need, but hamstring their efforts until one of your buddies can give you the solution that you want. The solution needs to either be stuck in your outdated and obscure technological experience to avoid having to learn anything new, or be overpriced to ensure that it coddles your personal preferences in layout. Be sure to not accept a solution because the obscure product you were using before had an on-screen ruler, or some such small-time issue. Remember, the focus here is not learning something new; rather, it needs to cater to your whims, obsolescence and compatibility with the outside world be damned. Actual functionality and security need not be actual concerns. If you are technologically inept, your poker buddy should be able to run it, and should oversee its rollout. It doesn't matter if all of the people that are technological professionals try to tell you that your solution is insecure/behind the times/overly expensive. You are the pastor, the shepard of this flock. You cannot let any aspect of your church to not involve your pet technology. Minus points if it involves a non-Apple solution.

Section 3: Personal interaction

5) As a pastor, you need to have favorite parishioners. You are to claim to be almost eternally busy, except for your favorite parishioners. Feel free to remark on all the cool stuff the two of you did during the week on Sunday while talking in a group with others that would like to spend time with you. But reiterate the fact that you are waaay too busy to spend time with anyone. Repeat every Sunday.

6) Business corollary: If someone of some importance is in attendance at your church, they get automatic access because, hey, it's someone important.

Section 4: Spiritual-sounding guilt == free work

7) When it comes to helping out around the church, there are those that will genuinely help out with the church. You can accurately call these people "suckers". They will help you doing the same menial job through thick and thin. Even though you know they are proving themselves loyal to work at more interesting volunteer work, make sure you never give them something more important to do, as it will take away from their being low man on the totem pole. Because, hey, if they were capable of doing a better job, they would be, right? After they have proved themselves faithful at doing the same crappy job for several months/years, and even after having filled in on an emergency basis for a higher-up volunteer position they are hoping to do regularly, it is your job to make sure that they stay doing the menial work. Wait for someone to join up that can fulfill the more advanced position. Make sure it is someone cool enough to be your poker buddy. If that isn't happening, get your non-Christian buddy to become a marginal Christian, or even hire someone from the outside on staff to fill in said position. Dashing the hopes of the faithful is a good way of making sure that they learn humility before God. Or something like that.

8) Innovating church functionality. If someone inside the church has a better way of doing something, by all means, hear them out. After you are done talking with them, call your poker buddy again. Try to remember the gist of what the original person suggested. Remembering important details is actually unimportant. Because you have heard this good idea, conveying that good idea to your poker buddy, and coming up with a solution between the two of you will automatically be a better solution. If need be, make your poker buddy an elder. That automatically trumps any proposed solution suggested by the hoi polloi. You can also claim that "well, that decision was made involving the church elders." This overspiritualization of the matter will make people who take their faith seriously to have no recourse.

9) People who are de-volunteering. If someone who has been volunteering for a period of time declines, for whatever reason (like they need to do anything outside of YOUR church!), be sure to guilt them into coming back. Use phrases like, "shepard/servant's heart", "doing God's work", etc. Remember, to people that place God as the center of their life, spiritualizing their toil at your church is a great way to lock them into doing work for close to free.

If you follow these steps, I'm sure you'll have a successful slave-based church where production is high, you are cool, and free to do whatever you want.

If you feel like any of this is leveled at you personally, I'd suggest you ask yourself why you feel pangs of guilt over this. You might discover some hidden points of pride that might be hindering you and your church spiritually.

Dodge Duck Dip Dive Dodge...

2011-07-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

Note: This is an old post. The argument referenced in this post is LONG since gone.

I *hated* my Pierce College English teacher. If you ever come across someone there named Mrs. Tierney, please feel free to say I called her a tree-hugging hippy. Her emesis-inducing postulation that nature was infinitely wiser than humans made me grab for the nearest container. Truly a horrible way to start my college education. And yet, some of the things we read in Walden continue to stick with me, no matter how hard I try to beat it out of me. And here we go:

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

Some background: In High School youth group (High Impact at COTW), there was a LOT of pressure to fit kids into the ministry somehow. Those that made the decision were almost deified in the youth group. My gifts did not lend themselves to evangelism at all. The feeling was that if you were not planning on being a youth pastor or starting a church to convert the penguins, you were deficient in some fashion.

So, my sense of humor took a very attacking tone. I didn't know why at the time, but I was angry at everyone for making me feel excluded because I intended to be an engineer when they felt that anyone of any intellectual capacity should be going to LIFE, APU, etc.

In 10th grade, Rock Solid was asked to provide the Worship team at Camp Cedar Crest. While up there, I was very clearly directed to examine the hurt I was inflicting people with my pointed sense of humor.

After I returned, for a while, I had to humble myself, and actively seek out people I knew I had offended, and ask their forgiveness. It was a tough thing to do, but I discovered that I didn't want to be that person again.

My Senior year, while at another camp, for the only time in my life thus far, I honestly feel like I heard distinctly from God. It was a confirmation that I was not intended for the ministry at all. The release from bondage that I felt was so extreme that for the first time, I actually thought that God's plan for my life might include using the talents that he had given me.

This included my sense of humor. My earlier experience had shown me that using my outgoing sense of humor to hurt people is a path I never want to go down again. However, my experience Senior Year showed me that God gives us our personalities, desires, and strengths for a reason.

Fast Forward to about five years ago. I was new in town, and, as I've said in previous posts, the people here in Santa Barbara are very close-knit, and I was coming in as an outsider. My lack of social interaction caused me to literally go to bed crying myself to sleep some nights. I knew that I thrived on social interaction.

My former roommate Paul Laufer put it very succinctly, but I'll have to paraphrase: "Joe is, at all times, unabashedly Joe."

I love to include people.

I love to mix people from various facets of my life and see if anything gels.

I love saying what everyone is dying to, but can't bring themselves to say.

I love releasing the tension in a room by talking about what everyone is thinking about.

I love to make people laugh.

To that end, I've found that the best fit for my sense of humor and personality, besides being pointed at someone, is to bring the surreal and unexpected into a given situation. I imagine that strangers walk away from a chance encounter with me going "WTF was that?" Not in a bad way, mind you, just with a chuckle and a shake of the head.

And my fearlessness to be in a difficult social situation, whether at the center of attention, for bemusement/possible scorn, or to launch into the unknown, has served me well.

I've gotten up in meetings and asked difficult questions that everyone wanted to know, but were all too afraid to ask.

While working for the Navy, during a crowded lunch room during a three-day meeting, I asked if I could sit at a table with two gentleman I didn't recognize. My Team Lead informed me shortly after that the two gentlemen were the Program director for Land Attack (PMS 529) and a one-star admiral (to be fair, the admiral was in civilian clothes). We had a good lunch, despite my Team Lead sweating bullets three tables away. (He thought I was going to whip out my thoroughly tasteless Helen Keller Jokes.)

The Walden quote from above has gotten me thinking about marriages. It's been said that women enter into marriage hoping their men will change, whereas men enter into it hoping the women do not.

There is a very (unhealthy) stereotype in most churches that the women will eventually "domesticate" their partner, and mold their men into being more like them. This can be seen in various cute quips and jokes that go back and forth, remarking on the establishment of women as the puppet master of the husband.

For the most part, it is only humor.

However, there are those marriages where the husband, in his efforts to appease his wife, has given up all vestiges of having anything he finds interesting. The ironic part is, in most cases, the wife is still not happy with him; now he's boring.

During a particularly dry point in my dating career, my good friends Jeff and Sarah loaned me a collection of pastor's take on the initiation and continued success of healthy marriages.

Surprisingly, it didn't contain the expected recurring theme of: "whatever the wife says goes." Most of them discussed the distinction between compromise versus collapse when it came to concessions when dealing with conflict; the need to provide the other person with boundaries to respect, as opposed to being a shapeless mass of goo. Being who you are, and yet supporting the other person.

I came to the realization that with my first girlfriend, in my eagerness to be supportive, I neglected to give her anything she could respect. My newfound realization to be true to who I was fit well with my earlier resistance to High Impact's pressure to force people into the ministry.

Let's go back a three and a half years ago. I was seeing this young lady, who, while a lovely girl, was exceedingly quiet.

Any conflict we had she would internalize, and she thought she should take any trampling of her personality as her burden to bear. I felt like I was dating someone that I could accidentally hurt to excess, and she would never let me know.

I came away from that relationship with a newfound respect for the verse "like iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another".

Not to say that she wasn't capable of it, but I doubted that I would ever be able to sharpen her without absolutely breaking her spirit, and I didn't think she would be able to correct me unless I made her so mad she couldn't see straight. It wasn't healthy.

This got me to thinking about the verse again, and how it might be likened to sparring partners (don't worry Petrie family, I'm not advocating any actual violence). But sparring partners are used to toughen up a competitor, but they are matched up by weight divisions.

You wouldn't take a heavyweight sparring partner and match them with a lightweight fighter.

In the same fashion, I know I need someone who can let me know when I've hurt them, and isn't afraid to tell me how they feel about it.

So why do we have all these disparate parts of my life in one post? Why post all this internal monologue concerning things that people could very well not care about?

Tabitha and I had a rough fight last night. It seemed small enough, but I didn't realize the full implications, or why it affected me so much until I had a chance to think about it.

The long and short of it had to deal with two situations in close proximity to each other. One of which I was being my loud self, and she tried to reel me in. The second dealt with a drive from LA to SB in which literally nothing was said.

I love being loud, happy, inviting, surreal, and sometimes embarrassing. It's who I am, and, unless I want to live a "life of quiet desperation", it's who I need to be.

I could quash that side of me, but that would leave her little to respect if the result of any argument was the removal of large sections of my personality. My experiences at High Impact showed me the importance of being myself, and the passive/aggressive nature that I exhibit when I'm being railroaded into something.

In the same light, I also don't want to quash her. I want to hear from her when she's upset. I want her to tell me when I've made her mad.

The entire car ride over, I was giving her the chance to speak when she was ready. I had told her what I thought, and didn't want to railroad the conversation.

Afterward, I realized I was still upset because I HAD wanted her to speak up. I had already told her how I felt, and I wanted her to feel confident and safe enough to let me know how she felt.

The whole reason I fell in love with Tabitha is because of her ability to tell an inappropriate joke. I love her confidence, I love her enthusiasm, I love her ability to point out when I've messed up, and to tell me how she feels. My frustration is in her reluctance to bring it out fully. My hope and desire is for her to feel safe enough to be able to express the amazing person she is with full confidence of my support in any situation.

I want to go through life together. I want her to be just as excited and confident about life as I hope to be. I want her to allow me to fuel her interests as much as she encourages me about mine. I want to be weird together. To have a passion and love of life that is infectious to all we touch.

The title of the post is a quote from the movie "Dodgeball". I include it because it because there is another quote that I think is relevant to this situation: "You gotta grab life by the haunches and hump it into submission!"

Me and my brother (ok, ok mom, my brother and me)...

2011-07-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

So on Saturday I had to drop Tabitha off at her Choir rehearsal (The APU 30th anniversary UCO concert). We hadn't planned ahead too well, and, as Tabitha hasn't been doing good with staying awake late at night while driving, suddenly realized that I would either have to drive to Azusa and back to drop her off, then drive to Azusa and back to pick her up, or stay in the area.

On such short notice, all of my friends in the area had plans (how dare they!). So, in a last ditch effort, I called my uber-social brother John. As expected, he had plans with the Orange County Wine Society. However, after a brief pause, he said he would find out if there would be space for me to join him.

About 20 minutes, he texted me and said I was cleared to come on down one way or the other.

Let me back up a long bit:

Growing up, my brother and I have NEVER got along. I mean like...ever. Everything was a battleground: bicycles, nintendo, nintendo controllers, computer time, model trains, legos, imaginary friends (mine could TOTALLY beat up his...), etc.

I think the only time we ever got along was when I got my wisdom teeth removed, and was sedated for half a day. However, I do suspiciously recall it was about that time my favorite monopoly piece went missing.....

It got so bad that one of John's close friends at the time, a very nice kid from a very nice household, often went home crying due to the viciousness of our arguments.

While I was in Jr. College, and working for the Navy, we shared a roof again, and, let me tell you, it got baaaad.

Yet through it all, there are certain snap points that I look at where, despite the hostilities we were currently engaged in, I was extremely proud of my brother, or hurt for him beyond words.

One time we were with CPAC at the beach. John was in training for Annapolis entrance (which he SHOULD have gotten into...don't get me started). My good friend Janelly, someone I'd known for a year and a half at that point, was a paragon of athletic excellence (or so I thought), said, "Hey, I'm going to go for a run down the beach." John said, "I'll join you", loaded up his camelbak, and they took off. I goofed around in the water for a bit, then came back to the towels, only to find Janelly arriving, walking somewhat slowly. "Where's John?" I asked. She replied "I couldn't keep up with him." My jaw hit the floor. Janelly is the kind of person that you envision running marathons casually. John ran in about 30 minutes later. (My brother kicks ass. )

As stated, my brother attempted to get into Annapolis. For those of you who don't know, this is a very big deal. The physical requirements, along with letters of recommendation and community service are extremely stringent. I remember swing dancing at Java the Hutt on campus at Cal Poly Pomona when I got the call that John hadn't made it. I collapsed onto a bench, trying to fight back tears.

Since then, my brother has come back with a vengeance. John has a major gift in business: my brother is one of those people that can sell ice to Eskimos. Going through his house, he can casually rattle off the number of times he has gotten a company to either spend their money to make him happy, or knock off a few hundred/thousand on a sale. He's has a wonderful life for himself in Orange County, married a lovely young lady, has a pudgy cat, a career that is rocketing higher and higher, and a wine cellar that is not to be believed. (Seriously...300 bottles of red, 150 white, and a liquor collection that rivals most bars in quantity, and beats most in quality.)

It was an interesting day when I discovered that I could hang out with my brother without worrying about whether or not we might be getting into another fight.

However, driving down to Costa Mesa Saturday night, realizing that John had turned his remarkable charm to make space for me, I realized that the nature of our relationship has changed. It's no longer a case of not dreading being around him; I'm now looking forward to spending time with him.

Wow...I bought the car

2010-04-01T01:15:00.000-07:00

I found this in drafts...interesting to look back at it now:

While Tab sleeps, I feel the need to put down things on e-paper for future remembrance...only because I've gone through so much the last few days...

So...firstly, I'm married! Let's start there.

When I worked at Blue Cross of California, it was one of the most fun jobs I've ever had. I started out doing trouble tickets, but ended up doing PC rollouts (I.E. upgrading entire departments with new PCs). There was a lot of goofing off in the lab, but we got sh*t done, and done well. However, it always started with Ignacio or one of the other senior techs going up to the department manager, meeting with him, arranging the walkthrough, noting any PCs of note, etc.

It kept us working, allowed us to interface with the customer, then we would retreat back into our little nerdery, work on the PCs, and resurface again to roll the PCs out. It all worked very smooth.

One day, Ignacio was tied up with meetings all day long, so he pointed to my good friend Vince and me and said, "Vince, I need you to take the entire Accounting rollout, I'm too busy. Joe, you are his backup."

There was a weird moment where, for as well as I knew my job inside and out, and as much as I had prepared, I thought, "We're not ready. We're just the kids downstairs goofing off. What do we know about this?"

I've had the same feelings both times I bought a car: my Purple-Dirtmobile-of-Death (AKA my Plum colored '97 Saturn SC2), and my current '99 Ford Mustang (No name yet).

Both times, I spent weeks and weeks looking for cars, researching all the finds I could find in my price range, carefully weighing each decision, and finally going ahead with the purchase.

Each time, even though I know I've made the right choice, and the car was a good buy, there was a sudden moment of panic, thinking, "Holy crap! I just spent $6000/$8000! Was this a good buy? Can I maintain this car as it is needed? I've never had a V6 before, is there something I need to know about maintaining it? Would it work better if I put in premium gas?, etc. etc."

Now, I'm married. I've waited my entire life for someone who is Christian/funny/witty/goofy/fun/sane/single, and now I've married her.

Driving off from the wedding, I was elated, but I got that feeling again. The thought of "I'm just a kid! (I'm not anymore, but this is freakout talking) What happens when we get into a fight? What happens if one of us gets sick? Will she still love me if I'm involved in some horribly disfiguring windmill accident? How can I possibly keep her entertained for a lifetime? I've done good so far in a year and a half, but what happens if we reach 20 years and we have nothing interesting left to talk about? etc. etc." But you learn with the car. It's various quirks and intricacies, how it handles, where you need to baby it, etc. After awhile, you and the car work so well, you can't remember a time you were with any other cars. The memories you form in that car you will tell. You just have to remember that it requires continual maintenance and care. What a fun, interesting time to be alive!

Now I know why Assassin's Creed has "Ass" twice in the title.

2010-01-17T02:02:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm a little behind the curve when it comes to video games now that I am a family man.

So, I waited until Assassin's Creed was $10 on Steam, then purchased it just to see what all the fuss is about. So now it's 1 in the morning, I finally finished it, and I am *PISSED OFF*

*breaths*. This game is one of the most overhyped pieces of donkey dung I have ever had the mis-fortune of playing. While beautiful to look at, and the crowd mechanics were interesting, the gameplay itself was *SO* *DAMN* *REPETITIVE*.

Lemme set the scene for you: You are an Assassin in the middle ages in $SOMEWHERE_IN_ISRAEL. Damascus, Acre, Jerusalem (and some I'm forgetting) are now only 2 miles away from each other.

Your master assigns you a target in a section of one of the cities. You go there, play the same 5 mini-games, each time gaining information on your target. When you have beaten a sufficient number of the mini-games, you are allowed to take out the target.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

And you do this 9 times.

Oh, and Sam Fisher is an Assassin. This guy is as obvious as Liberace in a Baptist Church.

Let me tell you what I mean by that: When the time finally comes for your assassination attempt, you can try to be sneaky and take the guy out stealthy and all quiet-like, but as soon as you do, even if you did it out of sight of the guards, the entire city is alerted to your presence, and you have to beat off or outrun/hide from a gajillion guards who have been alerted to your presence. Which doesn't make you an assassin really.

Or not a good one, anyway.

Which would make for an interesting game mechanic: Short-bus school of assassins. But I digress...

There is some attempt at stealth during the mini-games, which is ok, I guess, but the guards forget where you are the nano-second you jump into conveniently placed haypiles or roof garden, despite the fact that you just ran all of their best friends through in gruesome fashion 10 seconds ago. No, no, They simply forget about you. But can somehow remember who you are if you run through an area where you killed someone previously, even if by "previously", we mean 20 minutes ago.

There are two absolutely ludicrous "Nuking the fridge" mechanics about the game: Scholars and "Leaps of Faith"

If a group of white hooded monks should walk by, and you are being chased by the guard, you can elect to follow them, adopting a similar stance and shuffle, and the guards are fooled by this. Despite the fact that your sword, throwing knives, and gauntlets are plainly visible. It's like they all got injected with Stupidol.

The second involves "View Points" where you can gain reconnaissance of a given area to reveal the mini-games necessary to get to the assassination attempt. This involves free-climbing to the top of a very very very high building (in some cases, ~10 stories in in-game height). After reconing the area, you are provided a ledge to jump off of, as actually climbing down could be somewhat tedious. Below these ledges are haypiles.

So, 10 story drop.

Onto a haypile that is perhaps 3 feet tall.

What makes it odd is the fact that they got the motion of actually falling down pat. If any of you have ever fallen out of a tree, off of a garage, etc., when you are falling, you experience motion blur, acceleration, etc.

Ubisoft nailed the sensation of falling from a great height. So when you see that ground coming at you after a 10 story climb, you are thinking, "wow, I'm about to make a very large stain, first in my pants, then on the ground" And then you are stopped by three feet of hay. I laughed the first time it happened, and had to show Tab, who, even with a limited grasp of deceleration times vs. structural integrity, realized that it was absolutely ridiculous.

And the fighting. Oh lordy, the fighting. They meant to have all sorts of moves and counter moves, but after the first level, you gain a "block, counter-attack" move that you pretty much use for the rest of the game. Why? 'cause it's all that is needed. I was literally surrounded by 15 guys at one point, and was able to fend them all off using that one move.

What makes it bad is that it suffers from "Final Fight-itis": the bad guys are too polite, and by that, I mean that only one will ever attack you at a time. Ubi tried to mix it up by having a second guy attack you while you are assaulting another, but they neutralized that threat by allowing you to break off your assault and immediately "defend, counterattack" the second.

They will also wait until you complete an absolutely awesome looking finishing move on one of their Guard buddies before they will even think of attacking you.

Complete waste of time. I paid $10 for a pretty world, an interesting crowd mechanic, and an effective marketing campaign. Ugh. De-installing this crap right now. On to Mirror's Edge!

Peace beyond understanding

2009-11-09T17:27:00.000-08:00

Tab is really unhappy with her job right now, and it is putting strain on things. She warned me when we where dating that when things got rough, she tended to bolt.

In fact, it was a point of amazement for her when we had our fight and she treated it as a speed bump in a longer road.

Yesterday, we had a tense conversation that dealt with Tab's frustrations, as detailed here.

However, this morning, in spite of all the issues, I found myself amazed that I am her husband, and loving her for who she is.

No resolution to her stress, or the issues surrounding it.

We haven't yet addressed the issue that brought this out.

Weird.

The Health Care issue..

2009-09-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

Once again, an online dispute has forced me to put into words how I feel about the current debate.

This time, it's health care.

To provide setup, the first claim was that Michael Moore's movie Sicko, claimed Cuba has wonderful health care. My response:

It's propaganda. It's well documented. When the U.S. visits Cuba, they go to the clinic that Michael Moore showed. The average Cuban citizen has a much more dismal health care experience:

http://wizbangblog.com/content/2009/09/07/cubas-free-health-care.php

Then we got into a debate on health care in general:

It's not the government's job to met out health insurance any more than they should be handing out candy on corners for all kids...

All it takes is someone being competitive and offering a better solution.

When the government runs a place from stem to stern, this is what happens:...

http://www.salemnews.com/punews/local_story_059094805

The government should not be assisting anyone out of anything, save breaking up monopolies preventing barrier of entry for new businesses.

Health care is not a basic need. Air is a basic need. Food is a basic need. Water is a basic need.

Health insurance is a luxury. It's exactly what the name implies: insurance in the event of a health issue.

Life insurance is not mandatory, renters insurance is not mandatory, car insurance is only mandatory if you elect to drive....

In any case, the government, when left to run things, does not do a very good job. The Post Office, DMV, etc. should be enough proof.

Depending on the government for any aspect of your well-being or happiness is a recipe for disaster. The only thing the government has proved time and again that it can do well is blow things up, and waste money. And even then, it needs help to blow things up. I should know, I have worked as both a Federal Employee, and now as a Defense Contractor.

This person then brought up the familiar "Health Care should be as basic a right as firefighters, police, libraries, etc.", which is a common argument. Here's how it went down:

All those programs were sold to the American people, then left to rot. As a former Federal employee, I can tell you with absolute certainty that your money is being wasted.

What seems to be not understood is that the money for these programs was taken from the people that may or may not use it.

If you were earning twice what you are earning now, would you invest in health care for yourself and your family, or would you simply say, "hmm...my car is getting kind of old..."

People choose to invest in Health care for themselves or not.

There are low-cost clinics available in almost every town.

Emergency services are available everywhere.

Health care is available for those that choose to invest in it.

As for the other list of "necessities", they could all be improved by forcing them to compete with rival companies.

Do you think the cops would be beating people indifferently if they were paid by the number of convictions of the people they brought in?

All the examples you have given me are for "services" that are supposedly "free", but in actuality have been paid for by people who dare to try to excel and further themselves.

My friend has a saying, "Americans are born free, but taxed to death". (Ed. Thanks, Paul!)

As for the drug companies, if people cannot afford their products, they would be forced to lower the rates at which they sell it.

Ironically enough, the massive amounts of money that people pay into health insurance artificially props up the market so they can sell pharmaceuticals and emergency services at massively inflated prices.

And once again, I can say this with definity. I used to work at [A major US Health Care insurance provider]. Only 10% of the company is for dealing with medical issues. The other 90% is dealing with how to invest the truckloads of money that businesses and people pay them every month.

If people abandoned Health Care as an insurance, and dealt with it on a case by case basis, the price of health care would go down massively.

But we have been sold a bill of goods that health care is something we need to be making monthly investments in.

We are screaming to be taxed further, which is simply insane.

Think about this...what if, everyone could simply elect at tax time whether or not they wanted to fund things, and how much.

("Do you want to fund firefighters? police? Military? libraries? Pell Grants?")

No, nobody would volunteer. Why? Because it is YOUR MONEY. You earned it.

People are screaming for the government to save them as a substitute for taking care of the issue themselves.

If you feel strongly that you want to fund something on a monthly basis, set up a co-op with a doctor's office and your neighbors. Start the change now, but don't complain when EVERYBODY ELSE isn't funding something YOU want.

It really boils down to two schools of thought:

Should the federal government's role in the lives of Americans be to simply maintain the basics? (Military, Roads, and Business Regulation) This would allow people to venture out on their own, earn, and keep what they make. It puts the economic decisions of what to fund back into the hands of the people, and makes for a strong middle class that people can easily get into.

Or should the government be a "nanny" and provide for people from cradle to grave, punishing its most productive citizens to pay for services to the underperforming ones. At that point, the question becomes, "why work?" Everything is being handed to you simply by being in the US and breathing. California has had a long history of doing just that, and is paying for it, with businesses finding it is just too expensive to be in California, and moving to Nevada, Texas, and Arizona.

As for being in France and Norway, that's nice, but, last time I checked, they haven't had nearly the high innovation rate of the U.S., precisely because there is no increased incentive to be an entrepreneur.

In those two countries, the company is forced to pay massive amounts of taxes and benefits for the employees (health and otherwise). This, combined with the fact that if you employ anybody, it is EXCEEDINGLY difficult to fire them if they underperform, results in virtually no motivation for your employees to work hard or be clever.

When there is the possibility of massive reward, you will be more inclined to take more risk. If nothing is certain in terms of job, you will work hard to make sure you stand out and are rewarded for hard work. Increased taxing on those that work hard only leads to a nation of slackers, regardless of the perceived benefit for "all".

Then there was the "I'm a Christian, it's all God's money, we should give it all to a government-run communal pot that claims it will help the poor" argument:

I am a Christian, but I take comfort in the parable of the ten talents. God did not end the story with the last person getting bailed out. He called the lack of financial gain "wicked and lazy".

It is the job of CHRISTIANS to provide for the poor, the downtrodden, etc. It is not the job of governments. As we are not a country that has corporately put themselves in line with Christ, it is not right for us to demand Christian motivations out of the government. Remember the two heathens who tried to call out the demons in Christ's name? The demons laughed and beat them savagely.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2019:13-16&version=NIV

It is up to us as individuals to do what Christ would do. If we demand it from our government, we have replaced government for God.

I accidentally didn't complete a thought that I will put down here:

The sheer amount of new technologies that we have put forth from our efforts as entrepreneurs due to decreased taxing allows us the medical breakthroughs that we have today.

I agree there needs to be change. But, like I said before, it should take the form of business regulation, not taxing the productive members of society.

Environmentalism and Africa

2009-07-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

I'm having a good-spirited debate with a friend of mine on facebook regarding the role of environmentalism in Africa. He has taken the side that we must do all we can to ensure that nothing the developing countries do will impact Africa, and that we must do all we can to ensure that we don't impact Africa with our environmental emissions.

He even brought "white guilt" into the equation with the line, "However, we also can't ignore the centuries of colonialism that has been a major contributor to African countries being in the position they are in now."

I don't think he is talking about setting up wind farms in our country because England took over large portions of Africa 130 years ago. I'm going to take a guess that he is thinking we should impose modern Environmental standards on today's Africa.

I take the tack that with Africa being largely free since the '60s, the best thing to do is offer goods and services, but withdraw from telling them how and where they should conduct their affairs. Let them use DDT to combat Malaria. Let them drill for oil using the methods they want. To do otherwise is to revert back to a "convert the heathen" approach used by colonialists years back.

It's not often I find an article that nails it on the head, but I found one here:
(The Independent Review, v. VIII, n.1, Summer 2003, ISSN 1086-1653, Copyright © 2003, pp. 65– 86.)
(See mom! I can do references!)

Yet much of the crusading energy of current environmentalism derives from a much different source. For many of its followers today, environmentalism has been a substitute for fading mainline Christian and progressive faiths—its religious quality obvious to any close observer of its workings. Its language is often overtly religious: “saving” the earth from rape and pillage; building “cathedrals” in the wilderness; creating a new “Noah’s Ark” with laws such as the Endangered Species Act; pursuing a new “calling” to preserve the remaining wild areas; and taking steps to protect what is left of “the Creation” on earth. At the heart of the environmental message is a new story of the fall of mankind from a previous, happier, and more natural and innocent time—a secular vision of the biblical fall from the Garden of Eden.

Before the corrupting influence of modern civilization (and perhaps the true date of the fall can be traced as far back as the rise of agriculture, almost ten thousand years ago), human beings lived in genuine harmony with nature. Since the fall, the rise of acquisitive urges and the destructive powers of modern science and industrial production have defiled the innocence of nature almost everywhere. Environmentalism therefore seeks to protect the vestiges of the original natural order and perhaps in some places to restore a “true” nature—the original Creation, as it is in effect regarded within the movement—that has been lost.

One of the issues often overlooked is that Africa in its current state cannot afford to have environmentally friendly solutions to power needs. For the price of solar cells, they can get, at a minimum, 3 times the electricity using gas or coal-burning methods, and can have electricity during the night (imagine!). Not to mention the environmental damage done from the production of solar cells. (ethylene-vinyl acetate lining and heavy metals in water, not to mention the electricity draw necessary to heat and dope the silicon itself)

Later on, he talks about massive displacements of the indigenous people to make way for conservation parks. Ironically, most of these are on some of the most fertile ground that Africa has to offer. This is done to preserve these areas to bring in tourist dollars. People come in to experience "primeval Africa". Mostly westerners.

Turns out that the needs of the people are being marginalized due to the massive lobbying efforts from outside. By environmental groups. Western environmental groups.

The western world is starving Africa with its environmentalism practices, then making ourselves feel better by arranging aid. But hey, we get to feel better in the process. And isn't that the important part?

We're in (gross) sync...

2009-07-06T15:58:00.000-07:00

So apparently, Tab has filled you all in on my poo-ems.

For a touch more background, Sev, Matt, and I have been texting for some time about our sit-down activities when on the john, not in graphic terms at all, but in very flowery, poetic language that gives a valid description without being crass.

The humor of using delicate language to depict something so base is part of the humor, really.

Kind of like when Shakespeare made a sex/drinking joke in the middle of Macbeth, really. (look up the role of the gatekeeper if you have any doubts).

One of the side effects of this is that I have utilized (and invented) all of the delicate ways to describe such stall-based antics.

With that in mind, this past Sunday happened to be a communion Sunday. Pastor Dan Hicks gave a message about freedom, and was trying to make the point that you should leave your concerns and cares at the table.

However, the exact phrase started out as: "leave a deposit on this table..."

I stifled my laughter. I looked at Tab, and she had an equally devious grin on her face. If memory serves, the conversation went like this:

Tab: "Don't you dare..."
Me: "Honey, the pastor said to..."

We are going to have sooo much fun in life...

Pressure to perform...

2009-06-30T10:39:00.000-07:00

Note: This was made WAAAAAAAAAAY back in February, but I never felt I got it "just right". So, in lieu of anything else, I'm just going to hit "publish post" and call it a day. Enjoy.

Sooo, my girlfriend was happy Valetine's day. I got the opportunity to lie to her, and claim (genuine) exhaustion as a reason to not go out and do anything. And she loves me for it. :)

Unfortunately, for me, the memories are not quite so fond for this holiday...

Christmas was bittersweet with Carrie. She was so detached from investment into the relationship that it was as if she were not apart of it. I felt like a showpiece, almost "the flavor of the month".

Being a first Girlfriend, I went along with puppy-love abandon. Rather like Niles and Maris Crane on Frasier, I lacked a spine. By the time Valentine's Day rolled around, she had called a break to the relationship, from which it never recovered.

My second girlfriend, however, was so insecure about herself that by even Christmas, I didn't want to be with her.

In this year, however, things have changed. My last relationship was in 2000-2001. Since then, I have had a chance to grow and reflect on who I am both inside and outside of a relationship.

I've had opportunities with several young ladies since then, and have turned them down, recognizing the issues that would make the relationship unhealthy.

It was (unfortunately) a point of realized maturity (hate that word) when I turned a girl down, postulating that I would rather be in a healthy relationship then have someone to hug during V-Day.

Point being is that both relationships had major detractants when Valentine's Day came around.

This year, however, things were different. I finally had something of worth to give her. The best part was it took effort, not cash. And I knew it was going to be good.

Which is the weirdness. I've never had something I knew would be spot-on for someone without them telling me so, or finding out through someone else.

It made me really happy to do it.

It also gave me the confidence that I might have the ability to surprise her throughout her life. It's interesting to be happy to make someone happy, and look forward to doing it.

Fire again!

2009-05-08T16:00:00.000-07:00

So, as I start my 4th year here, I also am in the middle of my 4th fire.

We've had the Zaca Fire, Gap Fire (Which was the closest so far), and the Tea Fire.

So, as we start the Jesusita Fire, I've got to say, the rising panic is just not there anymore. I'm tapped. I've gotten everything that means anything to me. I'm going to go back down to LA. I'm not worried, upset, anxious, or mad.

It was a bit interesting leaving my place. To quote Han Solo: "I dunno. I just have this feeling I'm not going to see her again."

It's also interesting how much of your stuff is just...stuff. I realized that, while it would suck, if I lost everything, assuming that the condo and fire insurance handled the financial aspect of it, there is nothing left in the condo that I would be grief-stricken to lose.

My Gaming rig is out. (priorities, people!)

My Laptop and camera are out.
My Firearm is out.
The Wedding band/wrap is out.
My Important Clothes are out.

It would not be the worst thing in the world for Tab and I to start from scratch in a new place. So either way, I'm content to be where God places me.

Weird, huh?

Pre-marrieds is preventing communication in our relationship?

2009-03-16T17:20:00.000-07:00

So, Tabitha and I have been in pre-married class at Church On The Way. It's a good course, intended to shake out the details that most married couples hit as roadblocks only after many years in.

However, as part of the class, there are homework assignments, CDs, and classes. The homework assignments, when taken seriously, take a long time to complete, as it gives each person a chance to talk about themselves, their backgrounds, their viewpoints, etc.

The CDs are a 10-part series put together by Jack Hayford, talking about Marriage in a Christian context, and have been very illuminating.

The problem is that the only time we have to listen to the CDs is on our way back and forth from LA every weekend.

So, for the past 12 weeks, our drive times have been quiet, listening to taped sermons.

It was kind of weird being in a small enclosed space with someone you wanted to talk with and not able to talk with them.

It started causing problems when we would schedule something else that would infringe on our small "together" time. I found myself upset, as it seemed that any of the "alone" time we had was taken up with either quietly listening to the CDs in a car, or doing homework. There was never any time spent to just talk with Tab and enjoy her company. Between the CDs, homework, classes, gym, work, going back home, planning a wedding, it seems like there was never any time to "just be".

We finally finished the CDs this past weekend, and can now talk on our drives.

Wow...it's like I get to spend time with Tab again after not seeing her for so long.

And yup, I still love her.

144 days, six hours, 44 minutes and 15 seconds...14...13...12...11...

Should these go together?

2009-02-25T11:20:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, Google News can put together very unfortunate pictures with a news article. Here is one I saw that made me smile:

That's good eats!

Re-Discovery...

2009-02-24T09:08:00.000-08:00

What is it about a second look? When someone changes themselves only slightly, and you see them again and rediscover something you've known, but had completely forgotten?

The familiar suddenly becomes exciting again. Things you accepted at face value suddenly gain a dimension to them. Whether a passage of Scripture that you've read time and time again gaining a new freshness due to personal circumstances, or seeing someone in a different light because of a seemingly small change in yourself or them.

All this to say: Tab wore a skirt today. Wow. Just...wow.

Memory triggers...

2009-01-22T08:47:00.000-08:00

While going through looking at the new Starcraft II (Which looks like it is going to be so very much full of win), I came across a recording of the zealot from Starcraft...

Let me back up...in Starcraft, when you click on a unit, it will utter one of a handful of phrases. I think it is to allow you to use hearing to confirm that you have selected the unit you wanted to, which can be difficult in a crowded screen. for instance, the dropship confirms that he's ok, and ready to fly with "In the pipe, 5 by 5", SCVs respond with a cheerful, "SCV Here! Where do you need me?", etc.

So, getting back to the present, while reading up on it, I found a new video. Amongst the sayings was one from the Protoss Zealot. One of his "phrases" was, "My Life for Aiur" (pronounced "Aye-er"). Aiur being the home planet of this fictitious character.

It took me back.

You see, back in the day, I used to have LAN parties regularly. We would crash someone's house (Typically my parents, Paul's Parents, and later, Paul's), bring our computers, and enjoy each other's company while we blew things away late into the night (leading to mornings and afternoons again), until we just couldn't physically keep our eyes open.

Well, while in a caffeine-fueled fragging session at 2AM, pretty much anything is silly. So, when playing starcraft, the zealot uttered his usual catchphrase: "My Life for Aiur". John, ever the thoughtful one, said, "Wow, it sounds like he said, 'My Wife for Hire'".

We broke out in a fit of giggles.

Hearing it again, it got me thinking...so many memories.

I remember fitting seven people in my room and John's "annex".

This was before flat-panels.

We had monitor precariously perched on every spot on the desk we could find space. The heat in the room was overwhelming. John didn't have it too bad because he had stone floor, and could open a window. But my room, the 1 air vent with no return from my room, calibrated to a thermostat set in the living room, and two small doors with no airflow, usually got the room to a temperature reserved for saunas and heat lamp interrogations.

While playing Counterstrike (the original, mind you), Alvin, who was getting shafted, turned to Matt and said, "How sad is this? It's a Friday night, and we're playing video games with a bunch of guys?"

Of course, this is the same Alvin that, at another LAN party, this time at Pauls Parent's house, realized that Todd Afshar was nearby. After inviting him down, Alvin hung up the phone and said, "Todd says 'lube up, I'm coming over'". IIRC, that was the LAN party that had Paul, John, Sheasby, Dereck, Alvin, Todd, and myself, all at the Laufer's place.

I also remember Steven Harriton (aka "munchiebutt"), playing us at Starcraft. You see, we were recreational gamers with all games. Steven was ok at Counterstrike, but when it came to Starcraft, he was just sick.

At one time, he took on all three of us (Paul, John, and myself), and humiliated, nay, violated us. He even came down to my parent's place to play the night he proposed to Amy because, "I knew that if I stayed there, bad things could happen".

I remember when we had high speed internet in the dorms, and set up the IKYN Counterstrike Clan (IKYN stands for "I KILLS YOU NOW!!!!!!"). John (aka [IKYN]Phantom), unfortunately, was trying to play on a 33.6 modem. He tried, but usually was just too laggy to compete on our server. EXCEPT for the one time he got a headshot on [IKYN]Uranus during a practice session. Nobody except Paul and I knew what an absolutely awesome thing it was. I was soooo proud of my little brother...

Life moves on I suppose. I'm even more of a casual gamer than I used to be. I've gotten into other things. Friends, girls (or, more accurately, "girl"), VHDL, Phone re-flashing, etc.

But it is amazing how quickly a simple phrase can take you back.

"My Life for Aiur"

*giggle*

Love and all the scariness it entails...

2009-01-19T17:09:00.000-08:00

Today I had a rather important lesson in the difference between knowledge and realization.

As with anyone who has been single for awhile, I've gotten into a rhythm of dating. It's almost imperceptible how it creeps up on someone: cautiously, almost mechanically, trying to find out if any of the dealbreakers in previous relationships can be found in your current interest.

As has not happened in quite some time, when a certain level of comfort and interest is attained, you begin to have thoughts that this is the one, so you start to entertain that idea, going about the relationship, evaluating your interaction at a deeper level, thinking, "this is cool now, but can I deal with this the rest of my life?"

Not to say that emotions and feelings aren't there, but previous dating disasters have taught you not to get hopeful. Years of dating have diminished the expectations of this relationship to the point that that the initial response is to dread the other foot dropping, something horrible to be discovered, and for it to all come unraveled. (Hey, I have a sense of pattern recognition, after all)

So, up to about two months ago, it's been a period of me keeping myself in reserve, waiting to see what will or will not happen, knowing that, on paper, Tab holds all the qualities I'm looking forward to.

I was reflecting on this yesterday in the middle of a BORING meeting (seriously...hold a staff meeting only if there is something to go over with ALL the staff.)

Something broke. I am looking forward to being with Tab. The thought of being married, not just in general, but specifically to her, is one that excites me. I finally realize just how much I have based my happiness on her well-being.

And it wasn't anything overnight. No big "Ok! I Care a lot now!" moment. Only the realization that that point had been reached.

I don't know how long that has been the case, only that I am there now.

It's amazing how you can harden your heart for years and not realize how calloused you have become. It's also weird to realize the extent to which one person can become so emotionally ingrained without you being entirely aware of the process. You women are weird.

After a lifetime of being either alone or unsure about the girls I've dated, I've finally met a girl that I can put all of my effort into. She inspires me with her drive, perplexes me with her whimsical nature, challenges me with her point of view, and shows me, without telling me, where I need to grow.

We both do realize that nothing is set in stone, and things could end at any given moment for any reason, but right now I feel happy and cautiously optimistic.

While thinking about this at work, this piece came up in my playlist. It's amazing how music can be the expression of thought in abstract form. This piece, with alternating dark (questioning), and light (hopeful and excited) parts, captures how I feel. (And no, Justin, I'm not going to start writing poetry and cutting myself).

Reminders of the past...

2008-11-24T09:58:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, I had a chance to re-connect with an old friend from High School that I haven't seen in 15 years, save a brief howdie in 1999.

Jason and I literally kept talking until 1:45 in the morning. Talking with him, I began to miss those days, and I couldn't figure it out. On the drive home, it hit me: It was the friendships.

There is something about being in a large cluster of friends everyday without much in the way of formality.

I remember being in a large group of friends in High school group, Jr. High, going to Camp Cedar Crest and hanging out, being crazy, and being free to be goofy with one another.

Dating usually meant you brought someone into your group of friends.

Nobody was really really dating seriously at that time (get real people), so the concept of isolation from one's friends because of a dating relationship was usually a sign of a high maintenance relationship that wasn't going to last summer or college separation.

Talking to Jason, I began to realize that the way he included people was the formation of my current desire to include people in everything I do.

But, most importantly, some of the pain of my arrival to Santa Barbara began to come into focus.

The part I miss most from High School times is the lack of pretense in relationships. The ability to simply be one's self around other people, and not put up an act to keep people from possibly being uncomfortable with so much personal knowledge of each other; Being transparent to friends you could trust implicitly, because you hadn't learned, or needed, to put up guards.

Every year for the past few years, I make a trek up to Stanford around Christmas-time to visit another old friend. I look forward to it all year, but it has always been more than just a chance to unwind. Talking with Jason, the reason became clear: I could be myself. This other friend (now married to a lovely young lady, equally as friendly) is much the same. There is no need to hide, put up barriers, etc. This is someone with whom I can be my silly, goofy self with, and there hasn't been a need to keep them at arm's length. I can be silly, goofy, and vulnerable without having to worry about being hurt.

At a wedding yesterday with Tab, I realized the extent that I had emotionally not allowed her words and actions to affect me, keeping her at arm's reach internally, despite her earnestly seeking me out. Interacting with her at the reception, now armed with this renaissance viewpoint, I think I fell in love with her a little more. I could be in real trouble here. :)

Side note: In talking with Jason I found out I unwittingly embarrassed him at a High School outing in front of a girl he was very interested in at the time. Evidently, it was so thorough that he didn't stand a chance. He can finally laugh about it now. I had no idea. Oops.

Reflection on warnings from the past...

2008-11-18T15:33:00.000-08:00

Last night, I finally got a chance to watch a film I've been meaning to see for awhile now, Downfall.

It chronicles the final moments of Adolf Hitler and his immediate advisers in the final moments of the Führerbunker. It is taken from a wide variety of sources, including his secretary, Trudl Junge, whose interview takes place right before the start of the movie.

An amazing performance by all involved. In reading up on the background of the film, they address the touchy subject of making a movie where Adolph Hitler is not portrayed as a raving, screaming, larger-than-life evil madman at all times. He is being portrayed as being kind to his dog, kind to his soon-to-be wife, etc.

He is portrayed as being almost resigned to carry out his extermination of the jews and betrayal of the protection of the German people as part of the "laws of nature", with the weaker being destroyed by the stronger, and thus not fit to live in his vision of a rebuilt Germany.

It's amazing that those who don't want history to repeat itself demand he be portrayed as someone with no balance. They want to see a characterization of him as someone who was vicious all the time towards everything he touched.

This is dangerous because it leaves others to wonder why anybody would follow such an obviously deranged character. They then carry on their lives feeling themselves immune to such shenanigans because they are under the mistaken notion that anyone that evil will be as easy to spot as all the larger-than-life characterizations of him.

I realized that in order to learn the lessons of the past, you have to take all sides of the man. One reviewer put it succinctly: "We know from all accounts that he was a very charming man —a man who managed to seduce a whole people into barbarism."

Please don't get me wrong. He was an evil, evil, evil man, and I don't advocate anything of his means, or his ends. Sun Tzu said in "The Art Of War" that: "It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles"

What jumped out at me, however, was the amount of hero worship that everyone displayed. Even until the end, people were blindly putting their Hope in him, waiting for him to pull off a Change They Could Believe In that would save Berlin, save Germany, and save his vision of a third Reich.

The message of the movie seemed to say that blindly following someone simply because they seem inspirational is dangerous, and can send you down some really bad paths you won't realize until it's too late.

It's a good thing that we here in the US don't suffer from that at all.

Fire update...

2008-11-17T08:31:00.000-08:00

So it turns out Tab's house pulled through fine. One wall in the living room was damaged (we haven't surveyed it yet).

Evidently, a bush caught fire right outside the place. According to her roommate, Tab's other roommate kept the door unlocked, so the firemen were able to make entry to the house and clean the fire. Which makes me wonder if there is now water damage to the house.

Which isn't bad, because Tab kept a lot of her chick flicks in the living room. (hee hee hee)

After travelling to LA to get away from the fire, we stayed at my parent's place in Woodland Hills, which was directly downwind from the Sylmar fire (too far away to be in harm's way, unless you count smoke inhalation), we had to travel to Costa Mesa on the 405 (going through the cloud created by the Palos Verdes fire), and later to Azusa (Corona Fire cloud).

Joe's All-Socal Fire tour is done for the year. Our monthly intake of Carbon Monoxide is complete, thankyouverymuch.

All of our clothes smell like we have been at CPAC bonfires for a month. My clean clothes, which hadn't been anywhere near any of the fires smell like smoke from association in my trunk.

Thank you for everyone who prayed for Tab. From the description of the damage, it would appear that all her possessions everything came through ok, except for the possibility of smoke smell.

Incidental heroes, and hopeful re-beginnings...

2008-11-14T09:07:00.000-08:00

(Originally sent out in the wee hours of 14NOV08, then re-tooled to correct an erroneous assumption we had made due to the house being pelted with live embers.)

Soooo.....tonight has been more eventful than I had originally planned, with circumstances too contrived to be anything but divine timing.

After an exceedingly dull day at work. (UML....whee?) I was scheduled to go running with Tabitha and Mike Beck. Sooo, we are driving down to SBCC, when I notice a wildfire kinda close to where I estimate Mike Beck's house to be.

So I give him a call.

He re-assures me in his "Don't worry, I've got the situation well in hand" way that I am so terribly jealous of, that the fire is way far away from his place.

After we park at SBCC ten minutes early, I get a second call, with him telling me that after seeing the fire, he's kinda worried himself (vindication!!!), and that he's going to run up to his place and make sure.

So, the two of us are sitting in my car, Tabitha bored waiting for Mike, and suggesting that maybe we should start the run or at least stretch out before he got there, when I think about where the fire is in relationship to Tab's home.

I called my brother and Derek, but neither of them could get to the phone. I called Justin. He was in SLO, and hadn't heard about it at all. Finally, I get ahold of Sanford. I asked if he was in front of a computer.

Then I remembered who I was talking to.

He informed me the fire was north of the 192 by Hot Springs Road. Suddenly, Tabitha was not so lethargic. "That's my neighborhood" she said, no longer quite as bored.

We cancelled running with Mike, and raced up to her house. As we went higher and higher into the mountains, the smoke got thicker. I was reminded of all the people who told me that smoke inhalation, rather than flame, is the most dangerous part of any fire. Putting that away, we scurried up the road to her house.

People were leaving the neighborhood in droves. The entire scene reminded me of stereotypical movies and cartoon scenes when the lights come on in a dark room and all the roaches scurry away to safety. Except all the roaches in this case were cars. And we were the lone roaches going back in.

About 3/4s of the way up, my "low fuel" light came on. Yup, Joe was being macho, and trying to delay getting fuel until the last possible minute. Now the mental movie had us coming back down the mountain, and running out of fuel halfway back down.

Getting up to her house, the smoke betrayed the location of the light beams, reducing visibility. As we parked, I began noticing the ash flying into the beamwidth.

Stepping outside, the smell of a really big CPAC bonfire hit almost immediately.

Tabitha got into her place, and started to go through her stuff, leisurely at first, but with increased vigor as I impressed upon her the probable need to quickly pack as if she were EVACing her place forever. (Order of importance: Medicine, Photos, Computers, Firearms, Stocks/bonds/mementos.)

We called her roommates and asked if there was anything we could get while we were in the area. Only one answered, and gave us a location and list of things we could collect for her in case she didn't make it in time.

Loading up the car, I noticed a live ember fly up over the car. I continued to load, and the roommate arrived. She was in a panic, as the smoke was noticeably thicker, with the lights from the flames in the distance getting brighter, indicating a closer proximity.

The roommate arrived with somebody from work who was helping her pack. As I mentioned earlier, she was quite distraught, and her friend was calming her down and directing her as to what was important. However, she was still so shaken up that when she loaded some papers of hers in the trunk, it spilled in the fire-induced high winds and spread into the street, blowing about, making the roommates sense of despair that much more tangible.

While loading Tabitha's stuff in the car, I very quietly took the roommate's stuff I had previously loaded in the car out, and put it in her car.

Looking back, the roommate's friend said, "we have to go. Now."

I turned to see the winds had shifted, and were coming in our direction now. The fires were close enough that they were lighting the street. Just then, a cloud of embers landed in the street.

I rushed into the house, told Tabitha we were leaving immediately, and "was that the last of it?" She said yes, made sure she had her keys, but couldn't find her phone. I wish I could tell you that I said something re-assuring and inspirational, but I believe my exact words were, "F*ck the phone. You can get a new one."

I have never been so glad in my life to hear the sweet sound of an engine turning over. Say what you will about Fords, but this engine came to life as if it was just as eager to leave this stereotype of hell on earth as we were.

Barrelling down the mountainside, I struggled to remember what the manual said about the "Low fuel" light. Did that mean 30 miles? 50 miles? Was that only until the reserve tank was used?

Traffic seemed to flow until we got to the first round-about. Because of police EVAC and blockading, traffic ground to a halt. As Tabitha used my phone to make calls, I sat there quietly sweating, and wondering why and how I had succumbed to the male necessity to stretch things out to the ultimate end. "A half tank" I resolved, "from here on out, I will always leave a half tank". I probably won't, but it's like a new year's resolution: You make them with the best of intentions.

We got onto the freeway, and I breathed a sigh of relief as we made the turn off of the 101 and onto the 217. Getting off at Hollister, I went immediately to the Exxon Station. I filled up, and called around to make sure that anyone else we knew in the area was ok. We tried to locate her cell phone, and we thought we heard it in the car, but it seemed unlikely.

Getting back to our place, we stopped at our neighbors who had a TV and asked if we could tune in to see if there was any new news about the fire. Jeff and Leah are the most awesome neighbors anyone could ever ask for. They invited us in, and when they heard about Tabitha's ordeal, immediately offered her some wine, which she readily accepted. While watching, they practically insisted that we eat some leftovers they had (a *wonderful* combination of pasta, garlic, Parmesan, and cauliflower), we sat and watched the fire devour more than a few homes.

We returned a few things to the roommate that I forgot I hadn't given her at our previous encounter. She was surprised that I had thought to bring her PCMCIA wireless card as well as her laptop and power supply (hello? geek here!), as well as a box that had Bond Certificates in it.

We then made the trek out here to my parent's place. And here I sit, at 0146 in the morning. The news reports that we read at the time seemed to suggest that, barring a miracle, my GF's house was nothing more than crispy crunchy ash.

We got out the critical stuff at the time: laptop, majority of day-to-day clothes, medicines. We even found the cell phone after a bit of digging.

But, all this would not have been possible had one person not been at his station, and helped us out: Sanford, I owe you big for this one. Next time you get up here, it's Middleton's for you, my friend.

I made a stupid mistake early on in my last Computer setup (RAID0). As a result, I lost everything when one of the drives failed. I lost all of the emails that I had kept since 1995, all the funny pictures I had made or found online, all the love letters and IM fights, all my digital homework, programming files, all the goofy stuff I had been up to since 1996.

It felt like a past that identified me with my surroundings of the time had been lost; like a part of my life now had the capacity to fade away, the digital reminders of life previous to my current one were that much more tenuous. Easily lost, and with all likelihood, only being recalled when something jogged it, either in conversation or by association.

That is how I imagine it must have felt for her as we initally considered the house a total loss.

At the time, we made some attempt to quantify it: all her books, chick flick DVDs (which means the fire wouldn't have been ALL bad), all her clothes not in my car, her chair, bed (which used to be my brother's, then mine.), would be gone.

I had to make a restart when I bid adieu to those RAID0 drives (burn in hell you faulty 150GB Maxtors). It's a sick feeling. But at some point you can do nothing more but resolve that you are going to move on from that point.

So here is to holding out hope that her house is still standing, complete with books, knick-knacks, and one way-too-big-for-her-room chair.

However, if the chick flicks were to somehow go missing, I know *I* wouldn't shed a tear. :)

(present day, now)

We came to LA ahead of schedule to spend the weekend with my parents. Tonight, while cuddling on the couch after swing dancing, I noticed the smell of fire. Having been in the proximity of fire so recently, I dismissed it as being attached to various pieces of clothing that were involved in the fire. Come to find out that it was actually the Sylmar Fire that blew directly into my parent's direction.

So, we escaped the Montecito fire, only to be in the Sylmar fire. Aren't we lucky?

I'm breaking my own rules...

2008-11-08T01:29:00.001-08:00

I generally don't write about politics, but recent events have forced my hand. (And yes, I am opening myself to outside critique in this public forum).

Recently, someone asked for us to view the Obama campaign with "I sincerely hope those who don't believe in Obama for whatever reason will turn their hate and pessimism into support and optimism. I hope they realize through the eyes of the people at that acceptance speech that this is a rare opportunity for positive transformation. Will it be positive? I can't say, just as anyone else can't, but I hope because at this point we have no other positive course of action. Criticize his faults as they are definitively revealed, stop focusing on what you anticipate will be his downfalls, and give the man a chance to be what so many hope he will become. I genuinely believe he will surprise us all in a positive way. Really, what productive outcome are you hoping for by constantly posting stuff like this?"

So, "c'mon guys, let's all get behind our president now. It does no good to argue and bicker!"

I posted a lengthy response, then decided it needed to be said in a larger forum,

My interest in this is not to praise or dig at Obama, please understand. I am going into the Naval Reserve, and he will be my commander in chief. My only concern is that I simply don't like the duplicity that is being shown here.

So, here we go:

When Clinton was a "Lame-duck" president, and Bush had won the election, the comparisons were already out between Bush and monkeys. His intelligence was already being questioned, and he was being portrayed as nothing more than an un-intelligent hick.

What is at root with the new urge to be civil to Obama is the Bush-bashing that began before he even set foot in the white house. With the other side taking over, the fear is that all turnabout might be fair play, now leveled at the other-side's golden boy. The roles have been switched, and now someone else can sit in the back to deride and second-guess every decision that the POTUS makes.

(The original poster brought up Halliburton as an example of Bush's negligence)

I forget the name of it, but before a President takes office, he has to sign over all his investments to an outside company to ensure he doesn't steer the country in a way to personally profit him. There are measures in place to make sure he is kept unaware of what his outside investments are.

Halliburton, being a large company, with many large contracts in which other construction firms simply can't compete, would be a wise investment by any stretch of the imagination.

The reason for this is quite simple: They are the only Construction company that:
A) Can be trusted (unlike the large construction firm attached to the Bin Laden Family)
B) Can afford to provide military protection
and:
C) Can tackle large projects like city-building.

To run Haliburton's name through the mud in an attempt to bring down Bush is patently unfair. That's like claiming that EDS is evil because they are the only ones that could take on the Naval/Marine Corps Intranet project. You have to work with your best tools. It was the press who notified the president that his actions were benefiting the company his outside financial handler was investing in.

Halliburton was given a $307 million dollar no-bid contract to rebuild parts of Iraq. At first, that seems a conflict of interest. However, digging into google (search parameters, "clinton halliburton bosnia"), you'll find out that Clinton gave them a $407 million dollar no-bid deal to rebuild parts of Bosnia. And his financial advisor made larger investments in Halliburton.

(He also brought up the war)

As for the war. There were three things that lead to the war:
A) A need to get out of Saudi Arabia.

The Royal family is, at any given moment, a trigger pull away from being ousted like the Shah of Iran in 1979. They know it, the extremists know it. 9/11 was perpetuated by people who were incensed at the presence of US troops on "holy ground" (Saudi Arabia). The Royal family asked for the US to make plans to leave. It would be RIDICULOUS for the US to simply walk away from the middle east. So we needed a new base.

B) Saddam's despotism.

Saddam's flaw was not that he is a dictator or despot. What put the nail in his coffin is the fact that he was paying $25k per suicide bombing against our allied country, Israel.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/04/03/world/main505316.shtml

This was stepping up pressure. In response, Israel would find the name of the beneficiary of the money, evacuate everyone from the building, bulldoze the building, then leave them alone. In this way, all that money would be spent re-building their homes. This was making things difficult for our allies, and they requested help in finding a solution.

We knew the Iraqi people were under an oppressive regime, their leader was making things difficult for our ally, and was smack dab in the middle of the middle east.

The (correct) thought was that once we were there, and the Iraqi people are able to fend for themselves (which they are starting to do), our reward would be to rent space in the middle of nowhere to conduct our base of operations.

C) WMDs

They were there, but the press was kept in the dark until it was safely transported away:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/

Thank you for playing.

Now, you are asking, "Why do I bring all this up?"

With all the Bush has done, what he has accomplished, the other side has made him out to be an insane, self-serving, maniacal dirtbag. They have second-guessed him every step of the way, and have blamed him for their own problems:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

What the Obama supporters are concerned about is this: at this point he has been put on such a high pedestal that there is no earthly way he can meet their expectations.

When that happens, they are afraid that the same snarky, blindsided, nasty, nonsensical prejudgement that they have employed on W for the past eight years will be applied to Obama.

It will be interesting to see how he handles it.

Family events...

2008-09-15T23:33:00.000-07:00

So far, I've been to Indio, CA twice to visit my girlfriend's parents. ("Hey sweetie, how should I dress to visit your parents?" "Like you are going to meet them on the surface of the sun.")

One of the things that I am in awe of this family is their sense of family.

Let me explain.

Growing up, our family struggled to come up with common games and events that we could share as a family. "Family nights" usually ended when we all reached a creative blank as to a common interest. Mom and Dad's idea of fun was a quiet night with a board game. John and I usually wanted to eat ice cream until we were sick, then run around making insane noises until we collapsed into sugar comas.

At her family's house, it is/was assumed that any event one participates in is going to involve family in one way or another. It was a very different experience when I told Tab that I wanted to show her how to play Gumpsch (the most awesome multiplayer card game EVER!), and it was just assumed that I will be showing the whole family how to play.

It's amazing to see what happens with a home where Christ is the center from the start. I don't begrudge my parents with the way they raised me one bit. They were learning as they were going, and, all things considered, I'd say things turned out very well. But my desire would be to improve on that, to make things even more stable for my family.

And now, a note to make Kristin Calderwood sick: *ahem* I wuv you my widdle cuddly wuddly girlfriend. You are so cute, pookie, and I'm so happy to have spent this time with you so far. I don't need to drink water, for I sip from the fount of our eternal love.

Ooof. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth...

The Urge to Give...

2008-07-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

Today, when coming in from lunch, a good friend and co-worker came in, visibly crying, and distressed.

Concerned, I failed to notice a bandage around the forearm near their elbow.

Walking back to my desk (which is on the way to her desk), they began to tell me about how their first attempt to give blood resulted in the discovery that they can't due to small veins. This distressed them to the point of emotional breakdown.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am renowned far and wide for my inability to summon compassion for my fellow faceless man. My friends are my friends, and I will be there for them in any way I can. But otherwise, I have always felt that people in their natural form are cruel, mean, selfish animals.

My form of giving to people has been to help the ones that are trying to get extract themselves out of a given situation. "Teach a man to fish" rather than "Give a man a fish", if you will.

So to have someone in my office/cubicle crying because they were unable to help random faceless people was an odd and enlightening experience. It expressed an intense desire to better their surroundings, and not in a focused, visible way.

I suppose it is in matching with this person's giving nature. I tend to want to invest in people, to see my time spent well and things to come to fruition.

In Santa Barbara, people give in such dispassionate ways: recycling, volunteering for animal causes, putting political bumper stickers on their car, etc.

I guess this is my first collision with someone who genuinely cares about such things with passion up here.

It actually stopped me and gave me a moment of introspection. How odd.

Love, romantic movies, and chivalry...

2008-06-29T01:15:00.000-07:00

So let's open on a standard Hollywood romantic comedy. The girl, awkward, falls for our dashing hero.

Our dashing hero makes a sweeping gesture that makes all the women in the audience go "awww".

But if it happened in real life from a guy she'd known such a short time, the title would be changed to "While you were sleeping...I filed a restraining order".

So where is the disconnect? It is amazing to look at how Hollywood distorts things after you have realized it, and see both how it affected you, and how you unknowingly applied it to your own life.

In my instance, I have been a hopeless romantic since I figured out that girls didn't have cooties. Or, if they did, I wanted their cooties.

Ok, that sounds dirty. Forget I said that.

I would hear of how girls melted over the latest romantic situation set up by hollywood, and I would plan.

The thought was to give them the experience they seemed to idolize in films and such, they would react like the movies they idolized.

Needless to say, I would creep them the f*ck out.

This is not to say that I emulated what hollywood shoveled out like a mindless consumerist automaton.

The error creeped up not in my desire to be a romantic, but in my application of those desires.

So, in my desire to NOT scare women off, I've squashed my desire to apply romance to any of my attempts to start a relationship.

Since doing that, all the material I've read, and the issues from my first relationship, point to the fact that such grandiose gestures give the impression as to being a bit of a doormat, leaving most women with nothing left to respect. No balanced girl would want to be in a relationship with such a person.

Now that I am in a relationship, it's hard to allow those muscles to be flexed again. I have a girl that seems to like spending time with me, and I with her.

I do want to express it, but I have problems putting my guard down and showing her, for fear of scaring her off with something too big.

So, in short: women need to make up their minds when it comes to expressions of initial interest and romance. Either go for the big gestures, or don't.

But stop messing us up.

Pick one.

Either you continue to point to romantic comedies and such and not get freaked out when it happens to you, or stop propping up these contrivances of actual romance.

Another thought is: where does chivalry fit into all this? And I think that deserves a second exploration.

Chivalry is not what you do to impress someone. Chivalry is when your hand is forced into doing a particular behavior that benefits someone else not out of a desire to impress them, but out of a sense of ethics and honor.

Every time I open a door for what turns out to be a radical feminist, and she responds with "I could have opened it myself, you pig" or the like, I feel like spinning them around and explaining that I'm not doing it for their benefit. It is my part in making for a more polite society, and if they don't like it, I've got a finger for them.

It's 2AM. I miss her. 'Ay me, sad hours seem long'

Ok, side note: I've never had a song make me want to buy a video game. But I might just go get Endless Ocean because of this song. The games I've reviewed seem to tell a story of a game that is just as beautiful as the song.

Whiny Worship

2008-06-01T20:25:00.000-07:00

So I was in traffic the other day, and Newsboys' "In Christ Alone" (see below) came on (I keep it on shuffle...I like to live dangerously).

Something weird happened on Hollister on my way to work that morning: I started crying.

Those who know me know I'm not prone to crying for no apparent reason. So, it was weird...me crying, being moved by the song, and simultaneously going "what the hell?"

This is particularly curious since I had gotten out of church 16 hours earlier, and had nowhere near the same reaction during the worship service. To put some background behind this, the leaders of my church's worship team and I come from different musical interests. I favor more upbeat, driving music, whereas they tend to play creepy, minor-key, funeral-dirge, wordless electronica.

Which they play before, after, and during the greeting part of the service. I sometimes feel like walking up to new people and asking, "Did you know the deceased?" just to get a rise out of them.

As a result of this, the worship tends toward a more non-driving, staid, contemplative, non-emotional, presentation of worship. I don't think there has been a worship song we could clap to in months that I can remember.

So when a song that definitely and unashamedly lays out with heavy emotional content over the course of the song where *I* as a person stand in Christ, it's bound to feed a portion of my worship life that feels neglected. And thus the tears at the intersection of Fairview and Hollister.

This lead me to the following contemplation: "What is the spirituality of the emotional component of any worship?"

I've always known that songs that are a resolute definition of basking in the glory of God have always driven me furthest into the heart of worship. See below for another example (also newsboys)

In the church circles I've grown up in, it was driven into us that worship should be a spiritual, never emotional, aspect of relationship with Christ. This is to avoid a mass appeal in a show-style worship performance devoid of any substance. The story of the development of Matt Redman's "Heart of Worship" song is held up as the gold standard.

So then, are we supposed to treat emotional response as a waste product, or, further yet, an indicator of an incorrect approach to worship? The Psalms certainly are full of references to David crying out to God in anguish, and showing that delight can be shown in worship of him.

So can emotions be a trigger, or even more interestingly, a facilitator for worship? Can you use an emotional appeal to get someone to open up themselves to contact with Christ when simple intellectual knowledge of its benefits won't quite cut it?

In other words, like my mom tried when I was 8, can eating raw zucchini, while healthier, make getting nutrients so abhorrent that we dread it, as opposed to the approach now, when dad cooks them on the barbeque, and we can't get enough? (and don't get me started on the onions...mmmmmmmm)

We ended a series at church on Spiritual fitness. It's interesting to me, because when I'm running, I listen to fast-paced, high-drive music to maintain a steady pace when on the track. The high energy of the music helps me maintain a physical pace.

Let me put this in more generic terms: differing mental stimulation affects my physical ability. Would it be too much of a stretch to think that differing mental stimulation would affect the spiritual aspects of one's self?

Follow up...

2008-01-28T08:31:00.000-08:00

Remember this post?

As a refresher, it dealt with environmentalism as a religion, rather than a hard science, and gave multiple examples and reason.

Now, I opened up imdb, and read this. (At the bottom)

A great example...

2007-07-26T12:59:00.000-07:00

I have a friend I need to talk about...

A long (long long long) time ago, I dated a girl for awhile. It didn't work out.

One of the first indicators I had was this:

Her church was setting up a swing dance, so the band leader was there to help plan it out. After a bit, she excused herself to go talk to him out front. Watching them through the window, I saw her explain something to him, and his shoulders slump.

Turns out that they had dated recently, called a break, and she had left things with him quite open-ended. She had not informed him that things were done, with us dating and me standing there. Needless to say, I felt quite embarrassed.

At the actual swing dance, I cornered him during a break, and informed him that I was unaware of their entanglement, and wished no ill will between us.

Later, after said girl did something a bit similar to me, this gentleman and I became good friends, with me attending his band's performances whenever I was able. I even got his band a gig with a club I was involved with at Cal Poly Pomona at the time.

Over the years, we've stayed in contact off and on as we were able.

I caught up with him again in a series of emails, and discovered one of the best examples of character and love I've ever seen:

About 2 years back, I met his girlfriend, a real fireball by the name of Nikki. It was one of the last times I was able to catch his band before life, The Navy, and my present employer took me here, there, and everywhere.

Driving home from Port Hueneme one day, I randomly called to check in and see how he was doing. He seemed a bit down, and when prodded a bit, asked me to pray for Nikki.

It seems she was going in for a diagnosis for health issues, of which there was a high likelihood that cancer was the cause.

I agreed, and continued to pray for her when prompted.

I recently ran across an article that reminded me of my friend, so I emailed him. Catching up again, I inquired as to what happened.

Turns out that this past Feburary 3rd, the two of them got married.

On May 22nd, she passed away.

As non-existent as my dating life has been, I sometimes wonder with horror what it would be like to finally meet someone, only for her to be taken suddenly.

That's why I am amazed that my friend went into this situation knowing that there was a high degree of probability he and his beloved would be exercising the "till death do us part" section of their marriage vows a lot earlier than most.

That's Character.

That's Love.

Terrorism in history and Asymmetric Warfare...

2007-07-19T13:30:00.000-07:00

A lot of news space is being delivered to the war on terror, the war in Iraq, etc.

I thought I would start by getting at the fundamental issue: what is warfare? Or, more accurately, how does warfare end?

The Merriam-Webster definition is: "an activity undertaken by a political unit (as a nation) to weaken or destroy another"

I think in today's warfare, we can safely remove the "as a nation" portion. Al Qaeda, Shining Path, et. al. are operating without country, mobile between countries as alliances come and go.

The fact that their training centers have been destroyed reduces the quality, if not the quantity, of the fighting forces that we deal with.

However, the question still remains: what is the endgame of any war? How do you end a conflict?

Past wars have ended at the armistice table or with the routing of an army. My friend, who has forgotten more about ancient warfare than you and I will ever know, could think of no time in ancient history when any army was ever destroyed to a man. (As a side note, sometime sit down with him and discuss ancient warfare. He brings it alive, and you will be astounded by the amount of info he can recall from the top of his head).

Most wars between nations have been conceded when only 10% or so of the fighting force has been destroyed.

The Japanese in World War II understood that, which is why they expected to fight to the last man, and we expected to take huge casualties (estimates were around 1 million US casualties for Japan alone). It was only through a massive technological leap were we able to bring them to the table.

In other words, an actual victory on the battlefield means nothing if the politicians are willing to concede defeat.

Which brings us to our present conflict. Using the venerable slogan, "If it bleeds, it leads", the media is finding all the worse spots it can to report from, ignoring the successes to sell advertising space. In fact, few of the good things going on are reported from Iraq.

I am trying to get into the Marine Reserve. The recruiters I have been talking to have been telling me that the people who are completing their tours are re-requesting Iraq. That's not something the media is eager to report on.

They want the one homesick midwestern clerical Sergeant with a new baby that will make us so upset that we feel like buying the Toyota from the commercial they show right afterwards.

Now why is that such an issue? Because, as I stated before, the problem is with how wars are won. When a side feels like it is losing, historically, they have lost. The perception, not the actual facts, direct the march of warfare.

So when media, in an attempt to sell advertising, restricts themselves to only the things that are going wrong, they are losing us the war.

In this manner, we are fighting what the military is calling "asymmetric warfare". We are fighting their military troops, but they are really fighting the PERCEPTION of the war back on us back in the homefront.

They want to force us to the armistice table by weakening our resolve.

And the media is helping them by showing as much footage as they can of insurgents killing our troops.

To help Old Spice sell deodorant.

Something to remember from our grandparent's generation: There were naysayers throughout the entire course of World War II. "We'll never recover from Pearl Harbor", "The allies should concede European waters. We'll never sink the Bismarck", "The Germans can't be overrun. We should just allow them to sign another armistice.", "The Japanese will never surrender.", etc.

World War II gave us around 4 years of warfare with 407,300 military casualties at 112 times the casualty rate of our present operation, and yet we are conceding defeat.

We have lost the heart to fight on, not because our armies are not capable, but because our people are willing to give up.

And I say "give up", not "peace". Peace is not the absence of war. Living under the threat of harm or death is not a peaceful existence, even if no actual fighting is breaking out. To quote Edmund Burk: "All that is necessary for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing."

Something else that has gotten people's goat is the treatment of "un-uniformed combatants"

Allow me a detour:

I will admit I am late in starting on Tom Clancy's Ryanverse series (I laughed out loud when Jack Ryan brags about his 2 MB PDA), I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Patriot Games", which is actually the first chronologically in the Ryan series.

In it, he makes an eerily predictive point about the stickiness in dealing with non-country-based terrorists operating within a sovereign country. In the novel, it is the Provisional IRA/ULA, but the problems are very applicable today with our issues at Guantanamo Bay: How do you deal with people who are not citizens, yet operating militarily inside your borders?

Slumping them in with common criminals is treating them too lightly for what they have done, military tribunals aren't applicable, deporting them is not an option...

The book makes an excellent point: We deal with them as pirates. Not to say we make them wear peglegs and a patch (although....), but rather, once they are people sans country, they have no rights to any country's protection, and are dealt with as right-less.

Article 19 of the Geneva Convention deals with Piracy here:

On the high seas, or in any other place outside the jurisdiction of any State, every State may seize a pirate ship or aircraft, or a ship taken by piracy and under the control of pirates, and arrest the persons and seize the property on board. The courts of the State which carried out the seizure may decide upon the penalties to be imposed, and may also determine the action to be taken with regard to the ships, aircraft or property, subject to the rights of third parties acting in good faith.

In other words, we get to make it up as we go along!

With today's news that we bagged the #1 Al Qaeda man in Iraq, the troops AND THE MISSION need our support, now more than ever, to finish the job.

One of my friends suggested a bumper sticker campaign that might work: "Pull out of Iraq. Rape rooms aren't that bad."

Hey...it doesn't hurt anyone...

2007-05-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

Often, when faced with the facts as to how little humans truly affect climate change, they fall back to one of their old stand-bys: "it can't hurt to help!"

Yes, yes, it does.

In case you are lazy, the push for corn and soy-based ethanol is driving the prices up, keeping people in third world countries from one of their primary food sources.

What truly grinds my gears is the fact that this goes un-noticed. Even Christians are getting on the bandwagon by renaming it Creation Care.

Watch this BBC program. De-program yourself.

Why we should be intolerant....

2007-04-30T16:10:00.000-07:00

Johann Hari has a brilliant column on the travesties being done in German courts in the name of "multi-culturalism".

The upshot is that Muslim immigrants who manage to screw up enough courage to approach German courts claiming "my husband is beating the tar out of me" are being told, "Hey, it's your culture. I would hate to enforce my cultural stereotypes of women's rights onto your glorious culture. That leads to Crusades and stuff. Besides, you knew this going into a muslim marriage. Don't forget to shield your face with your hands."

On the one hand, I feel very very sorry for these women. They are hoping for a better life, and are being sold upriver in the name of being politically correct.

On the other hand, this puts the oh-so-tolerant left in the rare position of having to piss off one or all of its constituent members: Either the very powerful women's movement is going to have to sit by and watch their foreign sisters get beat, or they will have to denounce a religious practice, making them seem intolerant.

Personally, I'm hoping for muslim women to rise up and institute a smackdown on these radical Imams. Wouldn't that be humiliating?

It'd be Mujahideen brothers vs. the Menopause sisters. Sounds like pay-per-view.

Let's make fun of disturbed dead people!!

2007-04-29T21:52:00.000-07:00

Well, everyone is now psycho-analyzing the ass-hat that shot up Virginia Tech.

However, what everybody might not know is that Mr. Cho was also a burgeoning playwright.

The fine folks at Somethingaweful.com managed to get ahold of one of his manuscripts and have reviewed it for your pleasure.

What a whack-job.

Success Means You Aren't Doing Something Right...

2007-04-26T15:57:00.000-07:00

Yup, Billy and I are disagreeing again.

This time, he's quoting This blog with the following statement:

The emerging church used to say mega-churches are going away. They’re not going away. They’re predicated on the metaphor of consumerism. And as long as consumerism is the dominant mode of our culture mega-churches will always thrive. Some are saying that this next generation hates that. They don’t. They love it.
-Shane Hipps

To be fair, the rest of the blog that Billy quotes goes on to excuse itself from its inflammatory stance, but as Billy has chosen to pull up and talk about that one quote, I will do likewise.

Reading and re-reading this post, I am reminded of something my Mom used to tell me:

"Don't over-spiritualize being poor"

And she didn't mean "broke", "On a down-cycle", "experiencing a negative cash flow situation". She means f---ing poor. We're talking about a woman who at one point had to decide if buying a 10 cent pen would break her budget.

Allow me to give a little history lesson about our denomination (Foursquare).

WAAAY back in the day, Aimee Semple McPherson started a radical movement of faith called Foursquare.

It bloomed.

Like, a lot.

At one point, her soup kitchens were feeding more than the government's.

After some controversies inside the church, and after Aimee's death, things kind of waned.

In that period, the Foursquare movement died down. The huddled Foursquare masses hunkered down.

Enter Pastor Jack Hayford. Jack's gift was to bring Foursquare out of its exclusivity and make it accessible for all.

Some people did NOT like him for that. He had shifted the status of Foursquare for a small people who fancied themselves as the few, committed, misunderstood devotees, who know the whole truth. Suddenly everyone is at the party.

Success and having everyone in on a movement of God does not make it "consumerism". It means you have made something that people can identify with.

Wherein lies the problem with Mega-Churches?

Is it the fact that a lot of people come together in the name of Christ?

Is it the fact that the pooled resources of many can make for powerful contributions and provision?

Here, let me learn you some edumikation: It's a cultural instinct of us as U.S. citizens to always root for the underdog.

However, sometimes, the underdog isn't in the right.

So, with the new "emerging church" coming on the scene, they have a need to viciously rail against the "mega-churches". Otherwise, how can they, the small, few, misunderstood, be able to justify their continued course of action despite the lack of apparent interest?

Jesus was NOT the underdog. Yes, I said it. He was the epitome of someone who has everything under control, knows what is going to happen, and does what He needs to do.

Throughout the Bible, God consistently chooses the underdog. But they are humble underdogs. If Mr. Hipps' comment holds sway on the course of the emergent church, it will be destroyed from within by those who think any church that grows too big is "consumerism".

I'm famous! Sort of....

2007-04-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

Ystrday (Tusday), I got into th Santa Barbara Nws Prss...thy did a fature on social danc in the ara, and I was fatured on the covr of the "Lif" sction.

Thy mis-splld my last nam. Can you guss which lttr was lft out?

Western culture is perfectly fine...I'm not so sure about the Emergent Church though...

2007-04-12T08:46:00.000-07:00

It's happened again...

God bless my Pastor, but he has a tendency to rail against people who are...well, like me.

This, I explained... was the best analogy I could come up with for why so many rich, comfortable, western, neo-conservative, first ammendment protected, christians could claim they are being persecuted in a society of freedom.

(Found here)

Now, I happen to agree with him that the church claims persecution too much, and what we see in America is more of a "it's not as popular as it used to be" mentality than true persecution.

I also agree that persecution forces people to take a stand.

What I am concerned about is the mentality in the emergent church to think that anything conservative, or western is automatically discounted.

Take Pastor Billy's infamous "...arrogant, overfed and unconcerned west." line. I use to beat him over the head anytime the US, England, or Australia does something magnanimous.

Having only been exposed to the emergent church from Pastor Billy's viewpoint, I sometimes wonder if there is a place for me there.

As shown in two different places, it seems to champion leftist causes, often accepting feel-goods over fact. The "we should be doing something to help people" often trumping more realistic solutions. After all, sometimes the best solution is killing the people doing the killing. Does anybody really think that Saddam and his sons would stop the rape rooms if we had asked them really really nicely?

The irony is that most people in the emergent church seem to idolize Diedrich Bonhoeffer for his radical views on how a church community should operate, and seem to conveniently forget that he helped foment an assassination attempt.

True, it was Hitler, but Saul was an evil leader, and David still slew the man who killed him. It should not be the place of any modern Religious icon to be involved with the active planning of military matters. That is called a Crusade, and you can see how well that turned out.

One other thing that seems to pervade the Emergent Church is the readiness and willingness to take swipes at the Conservative viewpoint.

To be fair, Billy did amend the headline to say that "Sutton says" to blame Aimee Semple McPherson for the religious right.

My question is why should we isolate the "Religious right" to begin with? It only serves to isolate and divide a church along political lines instead of denomination lines.

Pastor Billy and I have disagreed about the church's involvment in politics. I think that the politics should follow the church. Pastor Billy thinks that the church should get in on the political game.

Now, with that much venom between political sides lying just below the surface, why infect the Church with venom that had formerly been left at the door?

Yes, pastor was joking with me when he stated that he wished there was so little conflict in the world that my employer (a defense contractor) wouldn't have work.

However, would it have gone over so well if he told one of the more-hippy-ish people that he hoped that there would be enough environmental understanding so that his people could stop torching SUV dealerships and spiking trees? Somehow, I think not.

As one of my friends used to say, "Multi-culturalism/tolerance is only tolerant as long as you agree with their politics."

Tell someone with a left-leaning slant that you think global warming is linked to sunspots, and not man-made CO2, and see how tolerant they are.

Tell someone with Birkenstocks that you think current firearms restrictions make no sense, and, more likely than not, you'll get a diatribe on how firearms in the hands of citizens are the worst thing we have ever thought up. Never mind that it prevented Japan from invading during WWII after they had smashed Pearl Harbor.

The emergent church, with its exploration of viewing things from other points of view, seems to reject mine.

How am I expected to get behind a supposedly tolerant movement that feels free to rail against my viewpoint almost exclusively?

Please don't take this as me leaving my church. When I don't feel my viewpoint assaulted, I value the different take on the Bible that Pastor Billy provides.

As should be the case with any blog, this is me simply expressing my viewpoint for all you sicko voyeurs to read. For those who agree 100% with Pastor Billy, good on you. I am simply voicing a concern regarding my exposure to the Emergent Church.

P.S. H1alphas were the only true Hummers. That makes this a thing of wonder and beauty

Pastor Billy is gonna hate me...

2007-04-09T16:07:00.000-07:00

My pastor has a problem with the new owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press, as you can see here and here.

Sooo, I was swing dancing on Friday night. It was a pretty good night. Awesome band, good dancers, my co-worker was there, I ran into an old friend, Jofflyn from my swing dancing days back in LA. A good night!

I was tearing it up with a girl named Tasha, when we get flagged off the dance floor by someone I've never seen before and a guy holding a fairly large case.

Thinking I had done something wrong again, I was relieved when she told me that she is a reporter doing a news story on Social Dance in Santa Barbara.

She asked me if she could interview us, and take pictures.

Tasha and I agreed fairly quickly, and we proceeded to swing dance while the cameraman took pictures of us. (It's HARD to do that, btw. I'd set him up for a good shot, then have to do a turn-out to get out of it, resulting in a very unflattering shot of my back and ass, and you couldn't see Tasha at all!)

So, the reporter then asked us a few questions. Afterwards, I asked what paper she was from, and she said, "Santa Barbara News-Press".

Sooooo, Seeing as I know that Pastor Billy isn't too fond of them, AND that he reads my blog, here you go! I am contributing to the downfall of journalistic respect in your eyes by giving the News-Press useful content to help further their circulation. Now the Daily Sound will have to struggle to catch up!

I'm off to spread more hate and discontent...

Ok, What in the hell...

2007-04-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

Soooo...you joined the Marines. We won't question why for a second, but we'll be back.

They train you to kill people. You are told multiple times that you will be sent out to kill people. You stay through boot camp.

Suddenly, you are called to war and told that you need to kill people like you have been trained.

Oops, suddenly, I'm a "conscientious-objector".

If you are anti-war, at least you are being honest. Misguided, perhaps, but honest.

But for the love of mud, if you are going to join the military, have the intellect to figure out that sometimes, the military will ask you to over-run/neutralize/kill/destroy/secure opposing forces with extreme prejudice.

Our military isn't made for tea-parties. K-bars make horrible stirring sticks. (Don't ask me how I know).

Global Warming is bunk. Here is proof...

2007-03-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

Here's an article explaining the unscientific way that scientists are being bullied if they don't express faith in mankind-caused global warming.

Let's break this down: Carbon Dioxide is a minor gas, and not the main greenhouse gas. Water Vapor is.

Al Gore got it wrong in "Truth". While there IS a correlation between CO2 and temperature, if you look at the data closely, Carbon Dioxide levels are a RESULT of changing temperatures. They do not lead the changes in temperatures.

96% of all Carbon Dioxide is natural. Man has nothing to do with it. Unless we are going to eliminate all leaves, termites, and cows.

Also, from 1940 to 1970, when the post-war boom was happening, and man-made carbon dioxide rates climbed exponentially, the earth was cooling.

So what is changing the temperatures?

Simple.

The Sun.

If you watch the above video, it will tell you that the rates of sunspots dictates the temperature here on earth. And we are coming into a record number.

The Earth has been a lot hotter than now, and humans have survived.

Some say, "Hey, let's just eliminate it anyway. What's the worst that could happen?"

Here is an article explaining how our environmental craze here in the west is starting to set things up to cripple Africa economically.

Global Warming will not "drown your neighbor".

Attempting to control something that will not make any difference in global warming by preventing developing nations to provide for themselves.

Watch this Documentary. All the way through. De-program yourself.

An idea for export...

2007-02-24T13:34:00.000-08:00

I think we should start exporting tin foil hats to Iran.

Now I want demographics...

2007-02-23T08:47:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally read an article that describes how I feel towards people in Santa Barbara.

Just to set the scene, when it comes to housing, EVERYONE here rents. Engineers for 25 years rent. Pastors rent. Newlyweds rent. Homeless people, had they the money to set aside for non-homelessness, would be renting.

And yet, the vanity that permeates this place dictates that they should not be left without fashionable wheels.

Enter this article. Basically, people are overspending for their rides. They are getting too much car.

This quote REALLY applies to Santa Barbara:

Treating cars as a status symbol. You can't watch television for long without being bombarded by car commercials, and many of us have absorbed the idea that we are what we drive. It's complete BS, of course, but some people have been so brainwashed that they literally drive themselves into bankruptcy.

And yet, they rent.

The real reason, I think, is that people fail to see the big picture. A car drops by a quarter of its value the instant you turn it over for the first time.

Historically, over a 10 year span, houses have always gone up in value.

So why?

Three reasons:

1. You are seen out and about in your car. Being the vain place it is, Santa Barbarians must be seen in the latest/greatest/coolest. Anything less would lessen their social status.

2. People don't visit much here. I thought LA was flaky until I moved up here. People here in SB will say "oh, sure! We'll be down!" All the time. It rarely happens.

3. A house anchors you. People here take pride in their ability to pick up at a moment's notice. Making deep roots means that you have to invest in your community. People here are wary to make any kind of social commitment to one another. It interferes with their free spirit-ed-ness. In my opinion, it also detracts from building a sense of community.

Amazing Grace...

2007-02-19T13:46:00.000-08:00

So I went to the Scottish Festival down in Long Beach this past weekend.

On Saturday, I hung out at the Clan Inebriated booth, and helped out as I could (got a free t-shirt out of it too!)

Turns out that a certain leader from Clan Stewart is trying to get Clan Strachan un-invited to the Pomona Scottish Games.

drama drama drama.

Oh, on Sunday morning, I went to a church service that they put on. Included was a "Kirking of the Tartans". It's actual history is in dispute, but the story goes that after Bonnie Prince Charles defeated the Scots, he banned the tartans in the hopes of killing any Scottish pride.

However, the canny Scottish would, being devout Christians at this point, would conceal a piece of the tartan, and show it at a certain part in the service, where they would re-avow their faith.

Now days, it's a yearly event, where those in Tartans (which, I hope, will be me next year) come up and declare their fealty to God.

However, later, we sang "Amazing Grace" to a bagpipe. I had arrived late, so I took a seat in the back. Which isn't a bad thing.

However, nobody notified me, and the bagpiper walked up the center aisle. From the back. Scared the snot out of me.

Oh, and those things are LOUD!

The service was good. It was about the tribe of Israel failing to learn from the lessons of the past, and repeating their mistakes. He equated it to the US failing to learn from its mistakes, neglecting to keep a careful watch on things, and/or taking the steps necessary to defend ourselves.

Yes, the pastor was an ex-marine.

This was the first time I ever thought the pastor would end a service not with "amen", but "ooo-rah!"

A new analogy...

2007-02-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of talk of how God "grafted" us into the promise of the Jewish faith, most often using the whole olive tree/fig tree analogy...

Well, I was in my shower the other day, when I came across a new one...you know how when you get to the end of a bar of soap, you use it until it goes down to a tiny nub, then you get a new, fresh bar, and sort of merge the two?

At first, it looks kind of silly, but as you use the bars together more and more, they become one bar.

I think that you as Gentiles (I'm Jewish by blood...neener neener!) have been grafted into the promise in a similar fashion.

Of course, the fact that I claim Jesus Christ means that I have completed my Jewishness, and now need His promise just as much as any gentile. Plus, I love bacon, have worked on the sabbath, and have never been inside a synagogue.

So, we are all the remnant of a Suave soap bar grafted onto a Dove Ivory body bar.

Conviction vs. Guilt...

2007-02-14T08:39:00.000-08:00

So, there was a mix-up on one of my previous posts about guilt from a pastoral point of view (it has since been resolved...just a case of misunderstanding), and it got my wheels turning.

Where is the line drawn?

At what point has a pastor crossed the line from exhorting his congregation, and placed them in a spirit of bondage over guilt?

One of the earliest memories I have on the subject was during Summit '94, when Tony Campolo was speaking. He related the story of a (in his mind), promising intern of his.

As I remember the story, he lost track of the intern, and discovered that he had become a plastic surgeon. The venomous diatribe that Mr. Campolo spewed made it seem as if Lucifer himself had turned this kid.

His tone of voice spoke as if being a plastic surgeon was the worst vocation a man could choose, if he neglected ambulance chasing. (I believe his exact words were "He could have been mighty for the Kingdom of God, but instead, he's a PLASTIC SURGEON")

Two weeks later, my dad went in for a surgery.

He had smashed his nose in during a bicycle wreck when he and my mom were first dating. For at least 17 years, he had lived with a deviated septum, which affected his breathing, caused him to snore, etc.

Guess what kind of surgeon he had to see?

Yup, you guessed it, a plastic surgeon.

It was at that moment that I realized that from the stage at Long Beach Arena in the Summer of '94, Mr. Campolo had placed thousands of kids in spiritual bondage over his inability to see past his own point of view.

When someone goes to see a Plastic Surgeon, many times they are in a state of low self-esteem, depression, etc. Thanks to Mr. Campolo, those Christians who would heed the word of clergy have quite likely removed themselves that vocation, thus cutting themselves off from people who are in desperate need to experience the Love of God.

Church On The Way had a nasty reputation for getting people to come to its meetings. They would start with "If you consider yourself an ongoing part of this congregation, then you should come to [insert meeting here]". People would come, but they would come out of a sense of obligation than real joy. It should be noted that they have drastically scaled back the usage of that language in exhorting people to attend.

So where is conviction? What does it look like?

The image that comes to my mind is a thousand hamsters in a huge version of those plastic roller-balls you see.

Ignoring food/water/air considerations, let's look at this: a thousand hamsters, thrown in together. How do you get them all to move in the same direction?

Well, there are two ways to do it. The first is for an outside force to push the ball, forcing the hamsters to collectively move. However, they will tumble inside this ball, and not really enjoy the trip. Most people put pastors in this position: on the outside, moving the church as he/she sees fit.

the other way is for the hamsters to all run in the same direction. In this scenario, the pastor is another hamster in the ball. Seeing the hamsters all running, he gets in front, and harnesses the momentum of the running hamsters, guiding them around possible obstacles.

Pulling ourselves out of the analogy, what does this look like?

A pastor's job is to make a congregation spiritually mature. From there, the pastor has to be able to recognize where the church wants to be led to. Right now, a hot point of care is AIDS in Africa. A lot of churches are making big news getting involved with that point of care.

If, however, a church matures, and the point that really strikes home is about Civil rights abuses in Chinese orphanages, the pastor has to recognize that as the conviction of the church, and lead them there. That is where they are most effective, and that is where their passions lay.

If the pastor should show them the latest video of emaciated Africans and tell them that they aren't doing enough to help ease the suffering there, he has just guilted the church.

In our example, the church is/was motivated to help in a way they felt called to. The momentum was moving to assist as they could for Chinese Orphanages, but the pastor used spiritual contexts to make the church feel culpable for not doing enough for the AIDS in Africa crisis.

But at what point does it stop? At what point do you feel called to say, "Yes, that is a tragedy, but the attention/time I can devote to this is minimal".

You can find hundreds of causes to champion. Because you feel drawn to one does not mean that you are ignoring the others, or are somehow less caring.

And yet, it seems perfectly acceptable to throw up a heartbreaking picture, put up a Bible verse that has something to do with it (and very often, is taken out of context), and end with a phrase like, "What are YOU going to do about it?" ("Nothing. I'm busy trying to feed the homeless here in America.")

People should feel the freedom to mature spiritually, then decide how they want to help out. When all the hamsters start running in one direction to solve a problem, and the church learns how to capitalize on that momentum, we'll see true ministry out of a conviction through the Love of God, rather than out of a spirit of bondage over Guilt.

Ezra's spiritual way made ready by Nehemiah...

2007-02-12T12:22:00.000-08:00

The US is coming into a new period of Nehemiah, after much of the Ezra-like spiritual groundwork has been established.

Let's set a bit of a background, as I understand it.

God's people, in captivity, have been told for 70 years to get ready. Priests have prayed, they have been told to expect it, and, true to His word, the people are released to go back to their land.

However, once there, they find the walls in ruins, and Jerusalem in no way to be called a homeland.

Enter Nehemiah. Having been granted favor with the king as his cupbearer, he requested the clearance and materials necessary to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls.

One might say that he was the first example of an engineer in the bible, save Noah.

In my walk, he was instrumental in showing me that it is necessary to be practical, even when you are dealing with the spiritual.

Nehemiah was the fulfillment of what Ezra was praying for.

What correlation does this have with the US?

After much worrying/fretting/praying over many of the major social issues there, the US is about to step in in a major way.

A few days ago, the President ordered the creation of AFRICOM. Its goal is to set up stability in the region..

Now, more than ever, we need to be praying for wisdom, guidance, and protection of our troops, as they are being committed long-term to a very just cause: making things hospitable in a very turbulent region.

The Nehemiah has come for the Church's Ezra-like preparation of Africa.

People...some common sense please...

2007-02-11T22:30:00.000-08:00

For those of you out there who have no idea what is going on, A local newspaper, the Santa Barbara News-Press has been taken over by a woman by the name of Wendy McCaw.

Evidently, she took it over, is not playing nice with the unions, has some sort of personal vendetta against Rob Lowe, has reduced the journalistic quality of the paper, and is fighting to make the beach in front of her house private property.

Ladies and gentleman, we have the anti-Christ.

At least, according to Santa Barbara standards.

Everyone loved their little paper, and now it is no more.

So what is everyone doing? Trying to fight to make it back the way it was by writing nasty things about her, organizing protests, etc.

In other words, acting like they are still in University.

People: welcome to the professional world. "Freedom of the Press" means that the government can't censor the paper. It does NOT mean that you can impose your ideas of "journalistic integrity" on the paper.

However, in the quasi-socialistic setting that the people around here seem to prefer, they would rather curse the darkness than light a candle.

In the spirit of capitalism, and taking positive steps, I present you with the only other option: stop buying their paper. Lack of money has been known to make a newspaper change. Also, if nobody is buying it, what they say won't make a difference.

Do you know why the "Enquirer" has been around for so long? People buy it.

If you are afraid that The Santa Barbara Free-Press will stay in business because people who are not up to your level of sophistication might keep them in business, you are being elitist, and need to take a look at yourself and your attitude towards your fellow man.

This is a clear-cut case of the free market deciding. Quit the 60's dream of a protest changing everything. Bumper Stickers espousing the decline of Ms. McCaw only serve to make you look foolish and hopelessly out of touch with economics. Vote with your dollars.

Start here. If Ms. McCaw buys that too, if you REALLY believe that EVERYONE is on your side, form your own newspaper, don't make it a publicly traded company, and put out the news that you think EVERYONE will want to see in a local paper.

If not, I suggest you discover something else to be worried about. It's a big world, I'm sure you'll find something.

So....what are you saying?

2007-02-11T21:11:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Please note that Pastor Billy didn't advocate commune living. This was something I was wondering about when the verse went up. It seemed like something worth investigating on my own. Pastor Billy was simply making a point about living in community in general.

So our Pastor had an interesting message the other night...he was talking on the subject of community.

He referenced Acts 2:42-47:

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

For a second, I almost thought that they were announcing "The Aqueous Commune".

But then it came to me: what does that mean for me? What is the application in my life. A couple of things stand out:

They did not quit their jobs. It does not say that they "quit their jobs, pooled their money, and cut themselves off from the responsible world".

So, the hippies got it wrong.

Which is good...I suck at the Tambourine.

So what is to be said here?

I know of no communes that have lasted with any success, save the Amish and maybe some Mormons.

But, I think regressing is not the way for the church to head, and, frankly, from what I've heard, trying to connect with one wife is hard enough, let alone many.

The ATF proved a deep theological point, namely that Sun Tzu's thoughts on fire trumps nutbag every time.

And who can forget that one compound that proved conclusively that cherry beats apple flavor, hands down.

So, commune living is out.

So how do re reconcile Acts 2 to our present method of living?

I notice that Acts 2 does not say anything along the lines of, "as it should be". It simply gives an example.

Pastor Jack Hayford blew my mind when he casually dropped in the middle of a service that: "God is not limited to his actions in the past". In other words, repeating what happened in the Bible in terms of configuration of people, resources, and specific prayers are no guarantee of God's will, unless it says so.

For example, The Lord's Prayer, starts with "This then, is how you should pray."

It is an explicit instruction.

The verses in Acts 2 offer no such wording.

It was how they acted in that time.

Furthermore, the footnotes in my bible point out that this was done so that they could pool their resources and provide for those that did not have enough for the essentials of living.

In current time, we live in a country where the poorest amongst us are still overweight. Our churches and church-affiliated non-profit organizations provide the most aid to foreign countries than the second and third placed countries combined.

So the reasons for a "sell everything and move in together" model of community are no longer strictly necessary.

Which is nice.

No offense to those who are/were hippies, but I really like to bath.

Interesting side note: reading through the Bible, I came across Exodus 36:3:

They received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to carry out the work of constructing the sanctuary. And the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning.

The "Freewill offerings" was the construction of the tabernacle and all its components. So, by definition, giving of your time is an offering to God. So the next time some church attempts to guilt you into volunteering, you can gently remind them that it is an offering, not a requirement.
UPDATE: Please note that Pastor Billy doesn't do this. I meant this for the church in general, which does have a bit of a reputation for guilting people into service.

Things that make you double-take...

2007-02-07T10:56:00.000-08:00

So I've visiting my Pastor's blog, and he has a comment on there about how the KKK is gaining momentum, fueled by anti-immigrant feelings.

And while this is serious, I couldn't help but laugh a bit when I saw the browser title. It's truly unfortunate:

Billy! What are you doing??? (j/k..love ya Billy..)

When having faith is a bad thing...

2007-02-06T13:02:00.000-08:00

While haunting Wikipedia, I stumbled upon this essay by Dr. Michael Crichton.

In it, he argues that environmentalism is a substitute for Judeo-Christian thinking wrapped in a tortilla of socially acceptable feel-goods.

"There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe."

Ouch.

He then proceeds to once again knock down all the precepts we've been spoon fed as "truth".

An interesting point he raised is about how ridiculous it is for us in the Western world to have glorified "nature", never having seen it's viciousness or callous disregard for all forms of life.

"Nature" has never been anything but an ugly, murderous mix of the stronger preying on the weaker until the weaker has been dominated or the stronger is temporarily placated (I.E. "I'm full").

" And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them."

At what point does a commonly held idea become religion? When it takes faith to believe in it? Ironically, that would make Atheism and Agnosticism religions as well.

Is it simply a set of instruction? I tend to think that when it crosses the line to guiding and dictating your actions and how you live your life, you have made that idea into your religion.

By putting the environment as the forefront of all things, we have made it a god, and worship daily. We accept social change blindly in the name of "the environment".
We ban chemicals that can help our fellow man in third world countries because the royal priests of environmentalism have decried them as bad, and a book was made in the 1970s. Never mind that they never were a threat to either nature or man. The most despicable part is that those attempting to ban DDT knew it was not harmful when they attempted to outlaw it.

We turn the stewardship of forests over to those that in the name of conservation and fire prevention, set change into motion from which the forests will never recover in their current incarnation.

We attempt to change ourselves to create a fictional, static environment that we think we have lost, ignoring the fact that nature around us will change with or without our interaction. A magnetic reversal of the poles is already underway, the Sahara desert is shrinking, the Antarctic ice sheet is growing and getting thicker, the hole in the ozone is shrinking, etc. You'd think that scientists would be questioning this.

"...because the beliefs of a religion are not dependant on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief.

But shouldn't study of environment be based on science? You'd think environmentalism would be moved from a state of mind to a scientific study. But you'd be wrong.

From Forbes' article "Clean and Green":

"Global revenues from clean technology, broadly defined, nowsurpass $150 billion a year, according to the Cleantech Venture Network, a for-profit membership group that connects venture and institutional investors with entrepreneurs."

So it's a multi-billion dollar industry.

And it's not just industry. Universities have been corrupted with the infusions of cash. $20 billion as a conservative number.

Be sure to read the Crichton article. In it, he suggests a plan to eliminate the religious aspects of environmentalism and get it back to hard science.
In the interest of starting anew, I suggest a term for those who choose to ignore the emotions, politics, and religious overtones of the study of the environment:
Terralogy. The scientific study of Earth.

Why I think Church On The Way will be around for 100 more years...

2007-02-04T14:15:00.000-08:00

For those of you who have been following along with Pastor Billy's blog, I've had an ongoing debate with him regarding how appropriate it was of Rick Warren to have Sen. Obama on the pulpit to "raise awareness" for the AIDS crisis.

Pastor Billy claims that it was A Senator who cares raising awareness.

I make the claim that it was Mr. Obama's way of stumping for his presidential run. Especially considering that he hasn't been overly vocal about the fact that the new Congress is not funding what they promised for AIDS research. I further make the claim that the real way to get the AIDS crisis dealt with is for the church to quietly go about doing it without needing the fanfare and hoopla with politics.

I've always been told to judge any action by the fruit it produces. As a result of Mr. Obama's appearance on the pulpit, people who would have helped to fund the AIDS crisis are now bound up in political debates regarding the church. The focus has been removed from the potential to help people. If Mr. Obama was really concerned, I would suggest he partner with Rick Warren in a non photo-op moment.

Another on-going debate with Pastor has been the discussion about Sudan/Darfur.

He makes the claim that because it isn't in the media daily, we are the 'arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned west".

I pointed out that back in 2004, Blair pushed for 150 million in aid for the region. Congress approved $850 million for all of 2005 and 2006, and the white house requested an additional $880 million (at the bottom).

Both the problem, and the solution are being dealt with quietly. Personally, my solution would involve the use of massive amounts of ordnance, but that's not the "Christian" way to do things, I guess...

So you may be wondering where/why the title comes into play:

I visited my old home Church, "Church On The Way", and what do I find out on the tithe envelope? (Click to make it ginormous)

No fanfare, no politician "raising awareness", just quietly doing what needed to be done. I wholeheartedly believe that God will reward their giving quietly, with the left not knowing what the right is doing.

With ethics like these, I believe God will continue to bless the little Church that could, now can, and does.

Places like COTW are examples of what make me proud to be from the west. We are doing things that no other country in the world can do, and are blessing people as we are able. May people like Pastors Tolle and Hayford continue to define the heart and generosity of the western church.

Fake blogs (the heck you say!)

2007-02-03T15:02:00.000-08:00

Soooo, the "fake blogs" award came out. "Flogs", as they are called. I won't give it away, but someone very deserving got the award.

Speaking of the award, it's worth the price of admission alone to see the actual award they hand out. Priceless.

I would like to volunteer to be a "Shlog". A shill blog. I will endorse almost anything in exchange for money. I can make a convincing "swoosh" noise with my mouth, and I can claim that McDonalds helped me to lose 5 pounds.

Heck, if Dow Corning paid enough, I'd make the claim that asbestos tastes like chicken.

So c'mon, hit me up. I want a Wii. :)

Ok, going to go live my life now.

Socialized medicine works!!

2007-01-26T12:29:00.000-08:00

No, really, it does. Because, when you combine politicians with vasts amounts of money, then ask them to remember that it's for health care, they respectfully keep themselves in check...

No, just kidding, they ask nurses to work for free to fund new buildings..

Environmentalism Racist?

2007-01-22T00:18:00.000-08:00

Here is another interesting fact put forward by Michael Crichton:

"I conclude that most environmental 'principles' (such as sustainable development or the precautionary principle) have the effect of preserving the economic advantages of the West and thus constitute modern imperialism toward the developing world. It is a nice way of saying, 'We got ours and we don't want you to get yours, because you'll cause too much pollution.'"

Another viewpoint on Environmentalism...

2007-01-21T23:22:00.000-08:00

The scientific political heir to Richard P. Feynman's views on science, and its need to remain pure in terms of being "science-only", I.E. not tainted by business or governmental politics, is Michael Crichton.

If 'ole Dick Feynman were here, he would agree. Read "Genius: Life and Times of a Curious Character" to see his viewpoint. One of my few regrets in this life will be to never have met the man. (and yes, I can call him Dick. He macked on my Grandma back in the day.)

Why Politicized Science is Dangerous
(Excerpted from State of Fear, as found at: http://www.michaelcrichton.net/fear/fear_main.shtml)

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

I don't mean global warming. I'm talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago.

Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California.

These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council. It was said that if Jesus were alive, he would have supported this effort.

All in all, the research, legislation and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected.

Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of theory were morally and criminally wrong. Ultimately, they led to the deaths of millions of people.

The theory was eugenics, and its history is so dreadful --- and, to those who were caught up in it, so embarrassing --- that it is now rarely discussed. But it is a story that should be well know to every citizen, so that its horrors are not repeated.

The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones --- the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the "feeble minded." Francis Galton, a respected British scientist, first speculated about this area, but his ideas were taken far beyond anything he intended. They were adopted by science-minded Americans, as well as those who had no interest in science but who were worried about the immigration of inferior races early in the twentieth century --- "dangerous human pests" who represented "the rising tide of imbeciles" and who were polluting the best of the human race.

The eugenicists and the immigrationists joined forces to put a stop to this. The plan was to identify individuals who were feeble-minded --- Jews were agreed to be largely feeble-minded, but so were many foreigners, as well as blacks --- and stop them from breeding by isolation in institutions or by sterilization.

As Margaret Sanger said, "Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty … there is not greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles." She spoke of the burden of caring for "this dead weight of human waste."

Such views were widely shared. H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Theodore Roosevelt said that "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." Luther Burbank" "Stop permitting criminals and weaklings to reproduce." George Bernard Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind.

There was overt racism in this movement, exemplified by texts such as "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy" by American author Lothrop Stoddard. But, at the time, racism was considered an unremarkable aspect of the effort to attain a marvelous goal --- the improvement of humankind in the future. It was this avant-garde notion that attracted the most liberal and progressive minds of a generation. California was one of twenty-nine American states to pass laws allowing sterilization, but it proved the most-forward-looking and enthusiastic --- more sterilizations were carried out in California than anywhere else in America.

Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the Rockefeller Foundation. The latter was so enthusiastic that even after the center of the eugenics effort moved to Germany, and involved the gassing of individuals from mental institutions, the Rockefeller Foundation continued to finance German researchers at a very high level. (The foundation was quiet about it, but they were still funding research in 1939, only months before the onset of World War II.)

Since the 1920s, American eugenicists had been jealous because the Germans had taken leadership of the movement away from them. The Germans were admirably progressive. They set up ordinary-looking houses where "mental defectives" were brought and interviewed one at a time, before being led into a back room, which was, in fact, a gas chamber. There, they were gassed with carbon monoxide, and their bodies disposed of in a crematorium located on the property.

Eventually, this program was expanded into a vast network of concentration camps located near railroad lines, enabling the efficient transport and of killing ten million undesirables.

After World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a eugenicist. Biographers of the celebrated and the powerful did not dwell on the attractions of this philosophy to their subjects, and sometimes did not mention it at all. Eugenics ceased to be a subject for college classrooms, although some argue that its ideas continue to have currency in disguised form.

But in retrospect, three points stand out. First, despite the construction of Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, despite the efforts of universities and the pleadings of lawyers, there was no scientific basis for eugenics. In fact, nobody at that time knew what a gene really was. The movement was able to proceed because it employed vague terms never rigorously defined. "Feeble-mindedness" could mean anything from poverty to illiteracy to epilepsy. Similarly, there was no clear definition of "degenerate" or "unfit."

Second, the eugenics movement was really a social program masquerading as a scientific one. What drove it was concern about immigration and racism and undesirable people moving into one's neighborhood or country. Once again, vague terminology helped conceal what was really going on.

Third, and most distressing, the scientific establishment in both the United States and Germany did not mount any sustained protest. Quite the contrary. In Germany scientists quickly fell into line with the program. Modern German researchers have gone back to review Nazi documents from the 1930s. They expected to find directives telling scientists what research should be done. But none were necessary. In the words of Ute Deichman, "Scientists, including those who were not members of the [Nazi] party, helped to get funding for their work through their modified behavior and direct cooperation with the state." Deichman speaks of the "active role of scientists themselves in regard to Nazi race policy … where [research] was aimed at confirming the racial doctrine … no external pressure can be documented." German scientists adjusted their research interests to the new policies. And those few who did not adjust disappeared.

A second example of politicized science is quite different in character, but it exemplifies the hazard of government ideology controlling the work of science, and of uncritical media promoting false concepts. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a self-promoting peasant who, it was said, "solved the problem of fertilizing the fields without fertilizers and minerals." In 1928 he claimed to have invented a procedure called vernalization, by which seeds were moistened and chilled to enhance the later growth of crops.

Lysenko's methods never faced a rigorous test, but his claim that his treated seeds passed on their characteristics to the next generation represented a revival of Lamarckian ideas at a time when the rest of the world was embracing Mendelian genetics. Josef Stalin was drawn to Lamarckian ideas, which implied a future unbounded by hereditary constraints; he also wanted improved agricultural production. Lysenko promised both, and became the darling of a Soviet media that was on the lookout for stories about clever peasants who had developed revolutionary procedures.

Lysenko was portrayed as a genius, and he milked his celebrity for all it was worth. He was especially skillful at denouncing this opponents. He used questionnaires from farmers to prove that vernalization increased crop yields, and thus avoided any direct tests. Carried on a wave of state-sponsored enthusiasm, his rise was rapid. By 1937, he was a member of the Supreme Soviet.

By then, Lysenko and his theories dominated Russian biology. The result was famines that killed millions, and purges that sent hundreds of dissenting Soviet scientists to the gulags or the firing squads. Lysenko was aggressive in attacking genetics, which was finally banned as "bourgeois pseudoscience" in 1948. There was never any basis for Lysenko's ideas, yet he controlled Soviet research for thirty years. Lysenkoism ended in the 1960s, but Russian biology still has not entirely recovered from that era.

Now we are engaged in a great new theory that once again has drawn the support of politicians, scientists, and celebrities around the world. Once again, the theory is promoted by major foundations. Once again, the research is carried out at prestigious universities. Once again, legislation is passed and social programs are urged in its name. Once again, critics are few and harshly dealt with.

Once again, the measures being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once again, groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human consequences. Once again, vague terms like sustainability and generational justice --- terms that have no agreed definition --- are employed in the service of a new crisis.

I am not arguing that global warming is the same as eugenics. But the similarities are not superficial. And I do claim that open and frank discussion of the data, and of the issues, is being suppressed. Leading scientific journals have taken strong editorial positions of the side of global warming, which, I argue, they have no business doing. Under the circumstances, any scientist who has doubts understands clearly that they will be wise to mute their expression.

One proof of this suppression is the fact that so many of the outspoken critics of global warming are retired professors. These individuals are not longer seeking grants, and no longer have to face colleagues whose grant applications and career advancement may be jeopardized by their criticisms.

In science, the old men are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise, counsel caution, and in the end are often right.

The past history of human belief is a cautionary tale. We have killed thousands of our fellow human beings because we believed they had signed a contract with the devil, and had become witches. We still kill more than a thousand people each year for witchcraft. In my view, there is only one hope for humankind to emerge from what Carl Sagan called "the demon-haunted world" of our past. That hope is science.

But as Alston Chase put it, "when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power."

That is the danger we now face. And this is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.

Ok, so I'm a little behind...

2007-01-18T16:15:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Michael Crichton's "State of Fear".

Wow. Just wow.

The story is his usual page-turning romp through a technological nightmare, where the resolution you thought was going to solve everything happens WAY too early to be an actual solution, and further serves to convolute the plot in a direction you hadn't anticipated. Simply amazing.

All the way, Crichton uses actual data to prove his point that the Global Warming issue has been blown out of proportion, and that we are actually on the cusp of another mini-ice age. All the while, he is shooting down arguments that you would naturally raise towards someone doubting what we have been told is a "real, dangerous threat".

*SPOILER ALERT*

Towards the end, one of the minor characters points out that before 1989, the words "crisis", "catastrophe", etc. were rarely associated with environmental causes in the media.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, something had to replace the fear of communism as a way of maintaining control.

The "Military-Industrial Complex" no longer is a safeguard that people cling to to protect them against the latest, seemingly insurmountable "bad guy".

Enter the "Political-Legal-Media Complex". The PLM seeks to control people by making them worry about something they have little hope of actually affecting, focusing them into kicking the goads. People are so worried about the environment, they don't think about other problems.

He also takes a swipe at the "liberal" colleges, claiming that this new complex is a "[factory] of fear". "The notion that these institutions [colleges] are liberal is a cruel joke. They are fascist to the core...."

As if to prove his point, just the other day, I opened slashdot to see there is talk of decertifying any weathermen who dare express skepticism towards global warming

Just a few months ago, the media were positively SCREAMING for us to transition to corn-based Ethanol for fuel, backed by Greenpeace and the like, yet recent research shows that for the land use that is required, filling the tank once could feed a person for a year

As another example, the DDT outrage that happened in the 70s has successfully banned the use of DDT, despite the fact that the research done was biased at best, and illegal at worst. DDT, which was known not to be a carcinogen, and innocuous enough to eat, ended up killing people as malaria flared back to life. In fact, DDT was so effective that WHO is reversing its ban, and now suggesting that it be used again to combat Malaria in Africa

He makes the claim that scientists have become like Renaissance painters of old, where the creation (in this case, research) is tailored to be as favorable as possible to the patron supplying the funding.

Crichton suggests "double-blind" funding for scientists, so that the scientists have no idea who is supplying the funding for experiments and simply do the research without bias.

* END SPOILER ALERT *

I encourage you to pick up a copy of this book. It will challenge your commonly held notions on what is truly going on in the environmental movement.

I'll end with a quote from my scientific hero, Richard P. Feynman: "It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared, but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations."

(Yes, it's a run-on sentence. He was a scientist, not an English Major.)

Side note: After reading this, I am deathly afraid of these things.. If you read it, you will be too. *shudder*

Another side note: a VERY thinly veiled Martin Sheen-esque character gets his in a way that is infinitely satisfying. Let's see him accept THAT script when it comes around!

Religon of peace holds an unbiased holocaust conference....yeah right...

2006-12-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

So Iran, the great moderate Islam country that it is, is holding a holocaust conference.

No, I'm sure the choice of people visiting hasn't been stacked, and I'm sure it will be nice and civil and devoid of a political agenda...

...and while I'm dreaming, I want a pony.

Poor kids?

2006-12-05T13:35:00.000-08:00

I feel more sorry for these poor mall Santas. Almost none of them look happy. A few look downright murderous...

Check it out!

Some more interesting thoughts...

2006-11-28T15:50:00.000-08:00

Here are some discussions I had over at Billy's blog.

I thought I'd repost them for your enjoyment...

When looking at the middle east, what results of having a fully muslim country is atrocious.

Looking at David Koresh, Pat Robertson, etc. when a Christian screws up, we are quick to say, “he’s a nutball, and we don’t associate with them.”

In most of the Islamic contact I’ve had in college and otherwise, they tend to try to justify (poorly) acts of barbarism and inhumanity. Suicide bombings in Israel? “It’s ours! They should be pushed out into the sea!” Killing of Theo Van Gogh? “He was speaking blasphemy!”

In fact, I find it interesting that they never distance themselves from the act, they justify the reasoning.

The people in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt who were dancing in the streets, handing out free candy, etc., after 9/11 tend to make me doubt the peaceful nature of Islam.

As a Christian Counter-example, When Pat Robertson or Jerry Fallwell make their usual crack-pot denouncements, there is a quick slam from the formal church, both distancing and making it clear that there is no connection with them.

I see very little of that happening in the 10/40 window.

Where were the Christian Riots when Jeff MacDonald made his cartoon of Jesus giving oral sex to Piglet? (Note: link doesn’t actually show the image)

There weren’t. The matter was handled without deaths or destruction.

I guess the distinction I am making is in dealing with Islam as a culture or on a personal basis. I forget where I heard it, but I think this rings true: “A person is smart; people, are dumb, panicky animals”.

As for them growing so fast, I remember in the 1990s, the fear was that Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormans were going to take over. “The mainstream church will be eclipsed by 20xx!”

And yet, here we are.

I do think that it is fruitless for us to sit here in our Christian-advantaged surroundings and postulate about “reaching out” to Muslim people when there is no threat of reprisal.

Living inside the 10/40 window, such an invitation would have to be kept in secret, and invites the possibility of death or permanent ban from the country.

My only fear is that the Muslim community will become a “squeeky wheel” to badger people into submission. People will voluntarily self-censor themselves out of fear.

I like Piglet. I like people questioning my religon. I like freedom to question any religon. Having a “dialogue” with another religon is kinda limiting if it means you can’t question any of their precepts or perceptions.

The recent “Cartoon riots” show, in my mind, a willingness to resort to violence when something is critical of their religious perception. Yet, I don’t think anyone of us would feel any hesitancy to field questions about priest and altar boys.

And this behavior is the point I am trying to make: Having a “dialogue” with an American Muslim is not as you would have with a 10/40 Muslim.

I guess what I am looking at is the fruit of a mostly-muslim nation. When Muslims are allowed to run the entire show (Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc.), human rights go out the window. We are dealing with a conquering enemy, something our generation has not had to contend with.

In my mind, this is not Britain and Brussels getting together to talk over a border dispute. Imagine, as Alexander was approaching India, the leaders of the Kambojas asked him to “dialogue”.

As you stated, correctly, I think, “in Islam she[christianity] has her only rival for the conquest of the world.” You are right there. They are attempting to take over the world. And as I was saying before, I suspect that their attempts in the US will not be successful due to existing laws and attitudes that will make things difficult. If anything, they will have to dillute the anti-Jewish/Christian/infidel retoric here.

The American Muslims here might be nice, pleasant, what have you. However, the 10/40 muslims show nowhere near the same amount of tolerance.

But what happens if they decide not to tone it down? How do we respond? If they gain sufficient numbers that the more radical Mullahs/Imams/whatever come over, what do we do at that point? What if, while attempting to hold them on hate-crime charges, we encounter riots? It’s a scenario I see happening all too easily.

I am a WWII warfare buff. I think it was fascinating how the world came together to combat a true evil, and (barely) came out victorious.

Reading Steven Ambrose’s books (Citizen Soldier, Band Of Brothers, etc.), which are biographical accounts of WWII’s european campaigns, the soldiers were amazed how they travelled up and down Germany, but never found a nazi. (Imagine that).

Yet, the culture is what allowed for Auschwitz, Chełmno, etc. It wasn’t that the whole of the population was active in the Extermination camps, but because they were hardened, even if it didn’t lead to ACTIVE agression towards jews, gypsies, homosexuals, etc., the culture they contributed to allowed these atrocities to occur.

In Islam, we see much of the same.

No, the vast majority of muslims will not attempt to suicide Israeli malls. However, when it happens, they will not think it a tragedy. When Iran calls for Israel to be “pushed into the sea”, they may not march in support, but they don't consider it a disgrace.

That is where I find the most difference. Any Christian who firebombs an abortion clinic in the name of Christ will find himself shunned and decried by all but the most extreme of screwballs. Heck, a Secret Serviceman who made anti-Muslim slurs is being charged.

If it happened in Iran, and it were anti-Israeli slurs, how much of an investigation do you think there would have been?

My fear is not the Muslims actively committing acts of violence. It’s the many many more Muslims supporting these acts of violence passively.

And sure, there are the few who are willing to stand up against them, but they are in the minority.

Billy, you mentioned about the people talking about the active cheering on the part of Christians inside the church. My response is that their impulses were that of Americans, not as Christians. This makes them not acting right as Christians.

With Muslims, well, the ones I have come into contact with anyway, are very emphatic that their anti-west, anti-Israel attitudes are part of their religious fervor, not out of any nationalistic pride. Indeed, it is amazing how Imans are the firebrands that tend to whip up a country, whereas over here, it’s more the politicians that have to motivate people to action.

I have no problems with reaching out to Muslims over here in the US. The governing laws and its enforcement make it next to impossible for them to use religious excuses to exact Sharia law.

A discussion amongst some of my friends overseas sparked an interesting point:

The key to unravelling the Muslim thread could lie in their women.

Inside the 10/40 window, especially in the lesser rich areas, women are almost property. After one of my friends (who is a red-cross nurse in Qatar), witnessed how they are treated, she said they are pretty much “brood bitches” I.E. they are there to make a nest, and crank out more soldiers for the fight against Israel and the west. (There is even a phrase: "Women are for children, men are for fun" Yes, closeted homosexuality is rampant there)

She suggested exposure to the freedoms that are available to women at a younger age could cause many of them to not wish to tow the religious line, resulting in a more moderate female population.

Interesting thought…

Revenge of the Religon of Peace...

2006-10-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

So, let me get this straight...as part of our appeasal of the Muslim faith, we can't:

Transport Booze in a Taxi

Transport Dogs in a taxi (Seeing eye dogs included)

Or Have a building shaped like a cube

Might I suggest something for the Muslim faith:

To be fair, Christianity has its share of recent homicidal tendancies...for instance, when Andres Serrano dunked a crucifix in a tank of his own urine, the rioting was severe....oh...wait...

Grab Bag of stuff:

2006-10-02T16:34:00.000-07:00

Well, another terrorist raid was conducted in Iraq.

It would appear that an 18 year old conducting the raid left a memento courtesy of Kevin Smith.

A little background for those of you who don't get it.

Also, a collection of REALLY good quotes came across my desk:

"Fighters are Fun, but Bombers make policy"

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling that thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." .... John Stuart Mill.

"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."

You women are gonna hate me...

2006-09-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's a little story about Joe:

Joe, after quitting T-ball in 3/4th grade, didn't really get a lot of exercise.

About 7th grade, Joe starts finding out he needs Large shirts.

There was a basketball league in high school.

Some Karate in 10th grade for a couple of years.

Then, he joined a gym about the 2nd year of jr. college.

Finally, some definition appeared on his body. Things were looking good.

Joe finds out he needs XL shirts.

Then Joe met Carrie. Joe was in love, and (foolishly) thought she was too.

While Joe and Carrie went to the gym together, they didn't spend as much time there, because they were too busy hanging out with each other.

So Joe goes to University, and cancels his gym membership.

Being an engineer, he can't spend as much time at the free on-school gym as he'd like.

While Joe is swelling down in muscle size, he's noticing that there is some flab appearing on the body. Not a good thing.

Joe graduates college, and, after a year of unemployment, finally works for NAVSEA.

A year later, having paid off his car a year early, he decides to re-join the gym he was at in Jr. College (Yes, he was living at home again at this point).

Having been a flabby-body, it is hard to work it off, especially with all of mom's good cookin' available to him.

So, early this year, Joe moves out. He gets a place in Santa Barbara.

He's still buying XL shirts because, hey...he's still XL, right?

After living on Yogurt and Vegatables for about six months, and rigorous workouts, Joe accidently made a discovery today when trying on some old clothes:

Joe can fit in MEDIUM shirts now.

New freedom in the Chinese marketplace...

2006-09-12T09:28:00.000-07:00

You have the freedom to be monitored by students. That's right...the government is paying students to monitor forums and report people who aren't towing the party (pardon the pun) line.

Sweet jebus on a stick...it's 1984, but in China. These people are reporting the "Spies of Goldstein" in forums.

And if that wasn't bad enough, now the Chinese media is telling foreign press what they can and can't report.

In unrelated news, China has become a haven for fuzzy bunnies and rainbows. Tiananmen Square never happened. And Taiwan is part of the mainland China. And Tibet too.

Nope, everything is perfect in China. As long as you belong to $Official_State_Religon, you'll be ok, I guess.

Welcome to the US...

2006-09-10T09:47:00.000-07:00

Here's the breakdown: using a series of laws that you and I will NEVER have to learn, the visiting Iranian ex-president has been sued by a group of Iranian Jews who allege that his policies were the cause of their relatives' dissapearence and torture.

The article goes on to say that they had the suit all ready to go, and had to wait until he was physically in the US to serve it. It also says it was personally served to him.

I would pay big money to see that on youtube/video google.

Folks, Abu Gharab was a frat prank.

If you want to see real torturers in action, watch American trial lawyers.

Give them an opportunity and a profit motive, and I'll bet Saddam would curl up into a fetal position and ask for death by piano wire.

Personally, I'm inclined to let them have their way with this waste of oxygen.

You think the Bush Administration is going to do anything?

I hope not.

Ok, I'm out.

Interesting stuff...

2006-09-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

Well, Al Zahawri and his Californian buddy have invited all Americans to join Islam. You know, I'd like to see what would happen if the DoD just wrote them and said, "ok". How could they justify bombing us then? Mind you, I'm not talking about actually converting. Just give them a momentary bit of confusion. Kind of like when you used to play tug of war, and the other team would just let go. Threw you off balance, didn't it?

In other news, here's a very sad story, and can help explain why I am anti-union:

*ahem* Canadian Soldier dies.

Town Canadian soldier was in finds out on a Saturday

Town Canadian soldier was in wants to lower the flags half mast.

None of the unionized workers were in, as by union rules, they had the day off.

So, a Councillor comes in on his off hours to do it himself.

Union files a grievance, as raising and lowering the flag is a union job

Asshats...

Shoe Bomber...

2006-08-24T18:05:00.000-07:00

Hey...the shoe bomber was sentanced....a long time ago...

And the judge basically bitch-slapped him, his point of view, his religous justification for murder, and his questionable motives.

I nominate this for the new speech that should recieve "Gettysburg Address" noteriety.

Any takers?

They want us dead...

2006-08-09T12:11:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't noticed, many of the major news reporting services have been caught faking photos in the Hezbollah/Israel conflict.

In addition, a new movie is coming out that details the origins, history, and future of radical Islam's focus of terror against the west. Interesting stuff.

Also, interesting side note: Never tell your boss you are going to "declare jihad" on your assignments. They tend to look at you funny.

Interesting point...

2006-08-02T13:07:00.000-07:00

on fark.com forums:

"How do they determine who is a civilian and who is hezbullah?

I mean 300 of the 450 Lebanese civilians killed could be Hezbullah...they all wear civilian clothes and operate out of apartment buildings, schools, hospitals etc.

All they need to do is remove the AK47 from dead bodies hands and all of a sudden they are a 'civilian'..."

Interesting tactic...like arming your 12 and 14-year olds, sending them out to fight, then lamenting Israel for "killing innocent children" when they are forced to defend themselves.

And now I repeat my mantra: "There are precious few problems in this world that greater firepower cannot solve".

Interesting language...

2006-08-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

"Disproportionate"

I always thought that term was suspect...Does that mean that Israel has the right to send suicide bombers into Palestinian? Should they have simply sat back and launched rockets back into Lebanon? This would have been akin to England not invading Germany, but instead firing rockets back into Germany.

War is not a proportionate affair. You overtake and destroy your enemy. That's how wars are won. If a small guy does not have the firepower necessary to destroy an enemy's army, he should either ally with a larger army, or sue for peace. This idea of "fairness" does not equate to the battlefield, nor will it ever.

I also love how the talk is now focuses on civilian casualties. What they fail to focus on is Hezbollah using civilians as shields

Israel has warned all those not affiliated with Hezbollah to evacuate. Those staying behind know the risks. As I outlined earlier, the UN tower that was attacked was being used as a Hezbollah firing position.

This is necessary to demonize Israel for "killing innocents". It's evil at its worst, and needs to be rooted out.

Never thought I'd see the day...

2006-07-30T20:20:00.000-07:00

But I completely agree with something that was broadcast on Al Jazeera. Wafa Sultan has my complete respect.

I pray that her message sinks in and resonates with all those who are teeter-tottering with the prospect of jihad/fatwa/etc.

Click here to see a lady that has the biggest set of brass balls in the middle east:

North korea is pissing everyone off..

2006-07-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

Even China is getting upset with them.

See, China is in an interesting place right now. They can't attack the U.S., much as I'm sure they would like to. This is because we are investing a lot of money in/with them, and they require the financial capital in order to grow.

China is attempting to play on the public market, and requires some clean-up in order to do so. For instance, with the Bejing olympics only two years away, they are attempting to teach their populace to wash their hands and not spit in public.

How does this fit in with North Korea? Well, as China can't attack us directly, they have to use intermediaries. And right now, they have us in a bind.

North Korea, has enough conventional arms pointed at Seoul to wipe it out on first strike if a war should break out.

So we have to protect our ally carefully.

On the other side, we have to protect our heavy investments in Taiwan. China wants to bring Taiwan back into the fold, but Taiwan isn't having any.

So how are these related?

Simple. China will use the threat of one to counter-act the other. If we protect South Korea in a war against North (again), our protection of Taiwan falters. And, if China makes a push to retain Taiwan, it simply has their North Korea puppet get hot over in South Korea in order to spread our forces out.

Bush is playing a diplomatic tightrope right now, and playing it well. The only reason we aren't in a mad rush to go in hot and heavy into North Korea is that Kim Jong Il isn't paying $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers in South Korea. He is only starving his own people, and not really attacking outside his borders, except for the occaisional saber-rattling (I.E. missile tests). We can take our time and see how far a diplomatic approach takes.

Misc. Potpourri

2006-07-27T13:59:00.000-07:00

Well, it would appear that China is so anti-civil rights, that even the pro-civil rights people are breaking their own necks. Amazing, ain't it?

And it has finally come out that Hezbollah was using a UN post as a shield. Israel has always very clearly seperated their military strikes with their politics. Something to consider.

Also, the only Aircraft Carrier used by the Germans in WWII has been discovered. Russia found it after the Nazi government scuttled it in shallow water, and used it for target practice during the cold war. Fun stuff, eh?

Just when the world couldn't get any crazier...

2006-07-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

A blind and deaf woman in Australia is suing her parents for not having aborted her.

It's been dubbed a "wrongful life" suit.

You know, I will repeat myself:

*ahem*

"There are precious few problems in this world that can't be solved with greater firepower."

Amen.

The religon of peace...

2006-07-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

Islam is tolerant of other viewpoints

All about peace My ass

And I thought the Holocaust didn't happen.

Evidently, it did to cause the religon of peace to mention it. But only when it suits them, of course.

Awwww....look...they have their own creed.

And they are willing to die for Islam. Well, there is a quote on that:

"The purpose of war is not to die for your country. It's to make the other poor sunnuvabitch die for his." -- George S. Patton.

It is times like this that I am grateful for people like Jack Hayford, who provide a moment of clarity in the chaos.

Points 5, 6, and 7:

5) To stand with Israel is not to oppose Arab peoples as an entity or to oppose the rights of Arabs living in Israel to a peaceful, politically secure, and prosperous life.

God has no disposition against any human being, certainly not Arabs who are the
offspring of Ishmael, the other son of His chosen leader Abraham. Standing for Israel doesn’t require an anti-Arab stance and doesn’t require us to be loveless toward other peoples.

6) The relentless animosities of sectors of the Arab world are not merely political causes but are driven by spiritual powers that will not be satisfied until Israel ceases to exist.

The forces opposed to Israel are not simply those of people who don’t like Jews. We are caught in the stream of spiritual forces greater than humanity, forces that cannot be overthrown politically or by the power of persuasion. These forces can only be broken by intercessory prayer where principalities and powers are cast down.

7) The same spirit driving these animosities is equally opposed to Christians as to Jews and in time will eventually bring persecution to both.

Just as Scripture states there are two witnesses that will be put to death in Jerusalem at the very end of time (Revelation 11), there have been two witnesses that have stood for God throughout history – the Jews and the Christians. The hostilities and animosities are just as leveled at believers as they are at Israel, because there is a spirit in the world that is against all that is called God and everything about Him.
• God as Creator – to Whom we owe our worship.
• God as Judge – to Whom we owe our accountability.
• God as Redeemer – Who has shown Himself through His Son, Jesus.
• God as the moral Lawgiver of all humanity – to Whom we owe a responsibility in terms of our behavior.

I have no problems with any Muslim who wishes to live in peace. However, it is the passive/agressive nature of the people of Muslim faith that has me concerned. Those not performing acts of violence are very often supporting it passively, or justifying it.

As I commented in another blog, to take a lesson from another Jewish-hating culture, and, at the risk of Godwin-ing this blog:

"Reading Steven Ambrose’s books (Citizen Soldier, Band Of Brothers, etc.), which are biographical accounts of WWII’s european campaigns, the soldiers were amazed how they travelled up and down Germany, but never found a nazi. (Imagine that).
Yet, the culture is what allowed for Auschwitz, Chełmno, etc. It wasn’t that the whole of the population was active in the Extermination camps, but because they were hardened via propaganda/culture, even if it didn’t lead to ACTIVE agression towards jews, gypsies, homosexuals, etc., the culture they contributed to allowed these atrocities to occur.

In Islam, I see much of the same."

Awww...how cute!

2006-07-18T16:53:00.000-07:00

Looks like China gets to share something with Germany

See? East and West can get along!

Denial ain't just a river...

2006-07-15T01:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm glad it got cleared up...evidently, the cause of all the problems in Iraq is Jews financing the terror

I have a bridge I'd REALLY like to sell these guys...

interesting times we live in...

2006-07-13T16:33:00.000-07:00

Two very insteresting articles...

One shows America's "saving face" attitude towards its troops, which deems it acceptable to seem, on the outside, like we are not doing much to save the lives of our servicemen with our military might. It is contrasted with Israel's inability to show any sign of weakness. This has led them to bomb Lebannon up to the stone age (probably an upgrade anyway). Check it out here

The other one is kind of funny. China seems perplexed that North Korea isn't acting sane at the negotiating table.

How surprising?

We're talking about a man who told his media to make everyone believe he shot 11 hole-in-ones on his first round of golf, pens operas and flies fighter jets.

Oh, and his father wasn't a dictator. He was an "eternal president".

We're talking about a country where the question "If a North Korean soldier kills 30 American soldiers with three clips of ammunition containing 15 rounds each, how many bullets did he average per soldier?" is a standard elementary school question

Oh, and Israel declared war on Hezbollah operating in Lebannon

Do not mess with Israel. They mean business.

This is a great photographic walkthrough of Psalm 83. I'm not one for overspiritualizing world events, but I think it brings things to life.

A real pick-me-up...

2006-07-05T23:38:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, your life is a little ho-hum. Then you read something that really makes your day.

Sea Shepards, eat your heart out...

Simply amazing...

2006-07-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

Sooo....I'm visiting out here in San Fernando Valley with some friends (LA for those of you who don't know around where that is... )

It seems that I've met up with a bunch of my former classmates...It was cathartic to hear about all of the "in-crowd"'s "after-high-school" lives. (Hint to all you High Schoolers...once High School is over, popularity means nothing..)

I was amazed at how many times someone would say, "so-and-so turned into a complete [Rhymes-like-witch]", or, "She was so stuck up...". Meanwhile, I, having been on the outside of the whole social scene, simply went, "umm...duh?"

I'm also glad I skipped out on the whole "oh, she met this guy, got pregnant, married the guy, cheated on him, divorced him and re-married after she became pregnant with his kids, etc." drama scene. Turns out that many of my former classmates didn't have it together nearly as much as they let on.

All those Friday nights alone with my computer seems like time well spent...

In the twinkle of a Liberal eye...

2006-07-02T01:43:00.000-07:00

I was thinking of something while driving home...Those of the left-leaning ilk have set themselves up for quite a conundrum:

They make the insinuation that life under Bush is a facist government.

Yet they support Gun Control.

Let me tell you why that is a contradictory point of view to take:

"but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.''

--Federalist Paper #29.

The purpose behind the second amendment is to assure that, should the government become too abusive of power, the people could take it back.

The typical liberal slant on the US today is that the present state is the end-times for the US, and all is lost.

If that were the case, you would think they would be all for unrestricting Gun-control laws to take back the govnerment.

But, they aren't.

Why?

Because it is simply more political posturing.

Please, make no mistake. I am NOT advocating the overthrow the US by force by any means.

I think the measures that the liberals decry so much are being done because of the times that we live in.

We can't go back to being isolationist.

And we've done this sort of thing before.

FDR had six Nazi terrorists shot without a trial.

Lincoln arrested southern politicians, thereby denying southern governments the chance to get together to vote for secession. And denied due process for their trial.

Go read up on the the stuff we did during the cold war...it'll raise your neckhairs...

The point is: the purpose of our military and intelligence services is to protect democracy, not practice it.

And as far as I am concerned, if you are in the US or another country, and you are attacking us without wearing a uniform, you have no rights to geneva convention protection.

We play by the rules. You should too.

With that, I'm out

Interesting question...

2006-06-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

Ignoring the "Christian answer", on a strictly instinctual basis, which one of these two statements leads you to believe the speaker is simply ignorant, and which one leads you to believe the speaker is hateful?

"The Catholic church is composed of nothing but pedophilic priests"

"The Muslim religon is composed of nothing but mindless terrorists"

Now, why did you answer the way you did?

Would you pay to be a member?

2006-06-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

It seems that somebody in Finland has created a website to assist people in resigning from the church.

Evidently, in order to become a member of the church (formal member) in Finland, you have to pay a yearly tax.

People are leaving the church, most often not because of religious issues, but because they don't want to pay.

It's silly to think that you could have a tithe and a cost of membership when the supposed purpose of a church is to facilitate people's growth in Christ.

I think this is an indicator that Finland is fallow ground for those offering to show them a personal relationship with God.

Prepare to be shocked!

2006-06-28T15:56:00.000-07:00

It's not often I agree with a Democrat.

But in this instance, I do.

Russia gets it, and we do learn...

2006-06-28T12:54:00.000-07:00

Despite their anti-US retoric, Russia understands the enemy we are up against.

This is not an enemy to be taken lightly.

On other news, the DoD has shipped New Humvees out, and it appears it is already doing the job. Unfortunately, it makes the MPG and transmission life go to absolute suck.

Many are using the opportunity to bash the military. "Why didn't we have this in the first place?"

Allow me to respond. The Humvee was a replacement for this:

not this:

It was never intended to be bomb-proof. The fact that there is no more clearly defined "frontline", and we are fighting a insurgency rather than an organized enemy means that the rules have to change.

We have encountered something we did not expect, analyzed the situation and adapted.

quityerbitchin'.

No mistaking this one...

2006-06-22T15:27:00.000-07:00

When God calls you home, He means NOW

Shouldn't be laughing...

2006-06-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

You ever surf the 'net, and find something that you are laughing at that you shouldn't be?

Here's another..

A mix of music and events I would have never put together myself...

This made me giggle furiously...

2006-06-20T22:19:00.000-07:00

The word of the day is: Goth-tard

Interesting turn of events...

2006-06-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

Them some crazy peoples there.

It would appear that the less-violent faction/pro-Abbas (the Palestinian president) Fatah faction have started attacking the Hamas-led Palestinian rest-of-the-government.

Their main gripe is that Hamas has been opposed to Abbas, since Abbas took steps to limit the Hamas' ability to curb militant islamic factions.

So, let me get this straight: A man who wants to end the violence is being represented by people who are violently ravaging the other side to drive home the point that they want less violence?

My head hurts...

France and Iraq...

2006-06-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

I just found the following interesting...

Being a young'n, I had no idea that the Jaques Chirac sold Iraq a Nuclear Reactor...

Israel took it out in a mission that shocked the world.

Interesting quote from the leader of the Israeli Mission: (found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osirak)

"Deterrence was not attained by other countries – France and Italy – and even the United States. It was attained by the State of Israel and its Prime Minster who decided, acted and created a fact that no one in the world today – with the exception of our enemies – regrets." -- Yitzhak Shamir

Here is a 45 minute documentary on it.

Very interesting, I think...

Al Zarqawi's last words...

2006-06-10T12:28:00.000-07:00

A reported, right before he died, Al Zarqawi mumbled something.

They have determined what his last words were:

"Shma Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad"

Another one bites the dust..

2006-06-09T22:14:00.000-07:00

So...in case you haven't noticed, we've killed Al-Zarqawi.

The Father of Nick Berg, the journalist decapitated on live TV, claims that only violence will emerge from this attack. A confirmed Pacifist, he makes some rather astounding claims, dealt with further down:

People like this frustrate me. They claim "forgiveness and peace". Which is admirable, except for two things:

1) This is a people dedicated to wiping out people on the basis of religious grounds. When dealing with a spiritual "call" like that, there is no turning them back, except for them converting, which, in that environment, is highly unlikely.

2) Pacifism does not work against terrorism. Pacifism entails going against an existing system to show that you will withstand any punishment in order to see your way through. Pacifism against terrorism only provides them with easy targets to destroy. Remember, the victims of terrorism are not the same as the casualties. Victims are those that live in fear when the casualties are killed. Pacifists are actually working FOR the terrorist ideal by de-arming and encouraging the availability of open targets.

Further, I think Bush and Co. have done an excellent job of not making this out to be a political "so there!" speech. They have downplayed the effects in order to take pressure off of our fighting men and women.

The other things that this does is really discourage anyone from taking over his role. All the press releases I have make mention of the fact that "we are looking at so-and-so as the next one to look for". Who really wants to attract that level of scrutiny?

Another thing that I found somewhat humorous is the fact that he was so over the top, that even Al Qaeda asked him to tone it down.

Mr. Berg's comments go as follows:

"Under Saddam Hussein, no al Qaeda. Under George Bush, al Qaeda.

Under Saddam Hussein, relative stability. Under George Bush, instability.

Under Saddam Hussein, about 30,000 deaths a year. Under George Bush, about 60,000 deaths a year. I don't get it. Why is it better to have George Bush the king of Iraq rather than Saddam Hussein?"

In any time in history, whenever there is a removal of a corrupt power, a power vacum exists. In this vacum, others rush in to fill it.

I suspect that one of the primary reasons we got involved in Iraq was that Saddam was paying the family of suicide bombers up to $25,000 per attack. In response, the Israeli army were evacuating, then raizing the houses of suicide bombers so that it was a net zero transaction.

As you can imagine, this added lots of tension in the middle of an already tense peace process.

I strongly suspect that this was one of our factors for invading Iraq. However, those in the Arab culture that would rather see Israel "Pushed into the sea" have flooded the area, determined to bring back the Good 'ole days. So in response, I would say that the removal of Saddam saw less killings in Israel. The killing of Al-Zarqawi is a step towards the removal of Al Qaida as a determining factor in Iraqi politics.

Yes, there are more deaths in the short term. It is a turbulent time. Would he have prefered that the rape rooms and the arbitrary executions continue? Somehow I think not. You are taking 14th century culture and bringing it kicking and screaming to the 21st century. Look how even today, the MPAA and the RIAA are resisting new technologies that have been introduced only in the last decade.

Change is difficult. Change is strenuous. But it has to happen. Otherwise, we become attached to the past in was that cannot be reconciled with the modern world. Kinda like a 60s peacenik in a post 9/11 world...

Ok, that's it. I'm done ranting...Carry on.