Year: 2011
Ted Williams Interviewed on the Dave and Jimmy Show
What a great testimony:
~Global~Sophists
Victor Davis Hanson hit a home run… again:
In classical Athens, public life became dominated by clever and smart-sounding sophists. These mellifluous “really wise guys” made money and gained influence by their rhetorical boasts to “prove” the most amazing “thinkery” that belied common sense.
We are living in a new age of sophism — but without a modern equivalent of Socrates to remind the public just how silly our highly credentialed and privileged new rhetoricians can often sound.
Take California, which is struggling with a near-record wet and snowy winter. Flooding spreads in the lowlands; snow piles up in the Sierras.
In February 2009, Nobel Laureate and Energy Secretary Steven Chu pontificated without evidence that California farms would dry up and blow away, inasmuch as 90 percent of the annual Sierra snowpack would disappear. Yet long-term studies of the central Sierra snowpack show average snow levels unchanged over the last 90 years. Many California farms are drying up — but from government’s, not nature’s, irrigation cutoffs.
England is freezing and snowy. But that’s odd, since global warming experts assured that the end of English snow was on the horizon. Australia is now flooding — despite predictions that its impending new droughts meant it could not sustain its present population. The New York Times just published an op-ed assuring the public that the current record cold and snow are proof of global warming. In theory, they could be, but one wonders: what, then, would record winter heat and drought prove?
In response to these unexpected symptoms of blizzards and deluges, climate physicians offer changing diagnoses. “Global change” has superseded “global warming.” After these radically cold winters, the next replacement appears to be “climate chaos.” Yet if next December is neither too hot nor too cold, expect to hear about the doldrum dangers of “climate calm.”
In 2009, brilliant economists in the Obama administration — Peter Orszag, Larry Summers and Christina Romer — assured us that record trillion-plus budget defects were critical to prevent stalled growth and 10 percent unemployment. For nearly two years we have experienced both, but now with an addition $3 trillion in national debt. All three have quietly either returned to academia or Wall Street.
There is also a new generation of young, sophistic bloggers who offer their wisdom from the New York-Washington corridor. They are usually graduates of America’s elite colleges and navigate in an upscale urban landscape. One, the Washington Post’s 26-year-old Ezra Klein, recently scoffed to his readers that a bothersome U.S. Constitution was “100 years old” and had “no binding power on anything.”
California Battered by Record Flooding Rains, Snowfall
Uploaded by Bloomberg. – Up-to-the minute news videos.
Your Rush Fix-Constitution Fetish; Bachmann & Scalia
RUSH: “Constitution Fetish” Shows The Lefts Contempt For The Constitution
RUSH on Bachmann & Scalia: I Love It When Womens Rights Activist’s Seethe
Designer Society via Genes
I read a great article today posted over at Public Discourse. I thought I would share the beginning which reached out and grabbed me. The article is by Justin D. Barnard and is entitled — Designer Genes: One scientist’s flawed argument for flawless humans. What a great article. If anyone knows me they know that I love politics, and I love my patron drinking saint almost as much. Who is that? C.S. Lewis. By the way, if you haven’t done it yet, purchase or rent The Narnia Code. Jaw dropping and it endears me ever more to doc Lewis (and his extreme intelligence) and to the wonders of my Creator. Anyways, here is the portion that hooked me:
In a 1958 editorial, C.S. Lewis commented on the questions: “Is man progressing today?” and “Is progress even possible?” Lewis feared the prospect of a “planned state”—a “technocracy” in which the government “must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists’ puppets.” With his characteristic frankness and common sense, Lewis articulated the grounds of his fear thus:
I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But . . . questions about the good for man, about justice, and what things are worth having at what price . . . on these a scientific training gives a man’s opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man.
Whether western liberal democracies have “progressed” in the direction of the “welfare state” that Lewis envisioned in his 1958 essay is a matter of on-going political debate. What is, perhaps, undisputed is that in addition to telling us about science, a new scientific priesthood speaks ex cathedra on the whole range of “questions about the good for man, about justice, and what things are worth having at what price.”
[….]
It is precisely this aspect of the new scientific priesthood that is most disconcerting. It wants science unencumbered by the rigorous demands of rational moral discourse. At the same time, this priestly class recognizes that they serve a populace still very much enthralled by a moral universe they have long since rejected. Consequently, the scientific priests must provide a substitute mythology for traditional, rational moral discourse—one that affords therapeutic solace for the vacuum created by the elimination of the latter. This is achieved perfectly when morality is reduced to emotive preference and science becomes an instrument in the satisfaction of consumer desire.
That Designer Genes aims at a popular audience is telling. It tells a story of the exciting and uncertain future of genetic enhancement in the tradition of Disney’s Jiminy Cricket. However, what guidance it provides comes not from conscience, but from technological possibilities offered in the interest of consumer demand. What passes for moral counsel is mere reassurance that the customer is king. If C.S. Lewis is right to fear scientists who speak as though their technical training as scientists provides grounds for moral authority, one ought to be more fearful of scientists who, speaking out of their scientific expertise, assure us with full moral authority that there is no moral authority. Just relax while the anesthetic takes effect.
Ted Williams Update
From The Statesman:
Left homeless after his life and career were ruined by drugs and alcohol, Ted Williams has been offered a job by the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and is being pursued by NFL Films for possible work. He and his compelling tale became an online sensation after The Columbus Dispatch posted a clip of Williams demonstrating his voice-over skills by the side of the road. The man has a great voice.
“This has been totally, totally amazing,” Williams said Wednesday, his voice choking with emotion. “I’m just so thankful. I’m getting a second chance. Amazing.”
The Cavaliers offered the 53-year-old a two-year contract, including living expenses, for a job that could include announcing work at the team’s arena. In court records, his address is listed as “Streets of Columbus.”
“I can’t believe what’s going on,” said Williams, a father of nine, adding he feels like Susan Boyle, the Scottish singing sensation who became an overnight star. “God gave me a million-dollar voice, and I just hope I can do right by him.”
Death Cult Leader Arrested-Mexico
Religion News Blog news on a cult that I believe drive the religious nature of the murderous drug cartels:
(Reuters) – Mexican police have arrested the leader of Mexico’s “Saint Death” cult and accused him of kidnapping and posing as a member of the feared Zetas drug cartel.
David Romo, considered the high priest of a cult with millions of followers across the Americas, was presented to the media on Tuesday in the Mexican capital after being arrested in late December along with eight others including a minor.
Romo, 42, is accused of helping to kidnap two elderly people and depositing the ransom payment in his bank account, Mexico City’s attorney general’s office said.
[…]
The Zetas are one of Mexico’s most violent drug gangs that are fighting rivals and security forces across the country in a four-year-long battle that has killed more than 30,000 people.
Meet Your Freshmen Class of the 112th Congress
1000-to-1 (Democratic Math May Be What Got Us To a 14 Trillion Dollar Debt)
On his MSNBC show this evening, Schultz asserted that corporations donate 1000 times more money to political campaigns than unions do. Or as Ed said, in his inimitably muddled manner,: “unions contribute 1/10th of 1% of their money that corporations put into campaigns. Now think about that: 1/10th of 1%. You got the corporate money over here you’ve got the organized labor money over here.”
How off is Ed? The National Review’s Rich Lowry has documented that in the last election cycle, three unions alone kicked in $170 million to Dem coffers. So corporations would have had to contribute . . . $170 BILLION to match Ed’s alleged 1000:1 pace just for those contributions, ignoring the donations that all other unions made!
The Princess Boy
Eschatology Watch
I love eschatological studies and guessing. I am of the mind-set that many items raised in Revelation is a first century man trying to describe 21st-century technology. While as Christians this application to Scriptures subjective, I subjectively hold vehemently to this view. I think helicopters are described, modern travel, internet type technology, and the like. I will never set a date or say “such-and-such” is a sure sign of some Scripture in regards to this end-time time. There are some major events in my minds eye that have either happened or need to solidify more in the future: the Roman Empire in some form reunifying (something I think has happened but may need to happen more?); Israel coming back to its homeland; and the building of the third temple in order for sacrifices to begin after its forced stopping in 70 A.D. Other things I see are travel and the internet being fulfilled:
- But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase. Daniel 12:4 (Source)
Television and internet capabilities prophecied about seem to be close to fruition in regards to the world being able to watch the Two Witnesses and see their dead bodies:
- For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb… Revelation 11:9 (Source)
While TV was always in the back of my mind, this i-Phone app got me rekindled as to the possibilities of the entire world seeing and reacting to a single three day event. Here is a FoxNews report on it:
This type of stuff is exciting to me. While I am a believer in the rapture, I wouldn’t hedge my bets on my time-table but rather leave time and date to the Big Guy. Stocking up on food and preparing for a persecuted church is by no means crazy nor alarmist. For those who understand that God works in history, sometimes dealing corporately with man as a whole, and knowing there are persons persecuted and killed during this time (Rev 6:9-10 – These souls may be new converts to the faith, they may not be) – C’ingYA is not a stupid proposition. I also like to think that America plays an important roll in protecting Israel (Rev 12:14). Thus, solidifying our lasting mostly intact through the hardest of times, however, I am one of the first to acknowledge there is very symbolic language used in Revelations and admit that I may again be wrong. Something my wife would say happens more than I like to admit! Here is the ending portion from a section in my book (pages 7-10) that comments on the liberality of the varying views in regards to eschatology:
You see, it was not until I heard true debate on the topic of whether or not history was guided by an ill intentioned cabal or not that I even considered revising my position. This debate allowed me time to deliberate and meditate on the issue causing a healthier picture of history to immerge based on all — or at least more — of the historical information available. Pride, selfishness, shoddy thinking, presuppositions, (in other words — our nature), will get in the way of us coming to conclusions in our life that could have saved us time, energy, feelings hurt, friends and family lost, as well as faith destroyed… ours – or others around us. Another point worth mentioning is during this time of formulation, deliberation, and reformulation — I was still saved in the fullest sense of the word. Jesus and His sacrificial covering of my sins were not affected by my peripheral eschatological viewpoints; no matter how disjointed it made my life. My unhealthy view of history and my subsequent forcing of Biblical passages to fit that unhealthy view did not affect the person and deity of Christ.
“In the essentials, unity: in the non-essentials, liberty; but in all things, charity [love].” Of course microchip technology have been well discussed and researched — I am sure — by most Christians who hold to the premillennial view of Revelation. In the last few days some interesting news stories about fish and birds have Revelations all the rage.
While I do not think this is on the scale Revelation’s hints at, not to mention that larger fish deaths have happened in the past, it is worthy to note that a small happening like this has gained a large audience. If these bowl judgments are what I think they are, Kirk Cameron will be the furthest thing from the un-believers mind. Another aspect i find connective is that most New Age cults have a belief that the earth will go through a cleansing period, some even going so far as to believe that those holding up the next stage of spiritual evolution will be removed. Again, this stuff is fun, but I wish to counsel the believer in being watchful. We have a model for this in story form from our Savior, The Watchful Servant.
Conservative Pessimism (ReasonTV)