The Day After

I got up early this morning (around 1 am) to watch the news and see how badly things were going. The news just wasn't good. The Democrats already had control of the House and are looking like they may control the Senate as well. I despaired. Then I read Bill Whittle's comments (and I recommend you do so right now, the link is over there on the right, I'll wait).

He's absolutely right. It's a defeat, it's even something of a disaster, but the Republicans had it coming and maybe, just maybe, they'll wake up and smell the coffee over the next two years. Like John Belushi said "Did we give up when the Germans attacked Pearl Harbor?" We've seen tough times before. We're Americans, we'll overcome, that's what we do. We have not yet begun to fight.

So cowboy up. Be of good cheer. Don't despair and remind me of these words when I despair (yes, I mean you, my dear wife and faithful reader). Go home tonight and enjoy the company of your spouse and family. Have a good dinner, not the dinner of a condemned man but the dinner of one who knows he has a marathon to run tomorrow and over the next two years.

I'm working on an entry containing advice for the Republican party, assuming that they want to re-take the House and Senate and keep the Presidency in two years. Watch for it.

Mischief Night

When I first moved from Staten Island, NYC to New Jersey some eight years ago I had a lot to get used to. First was that, when you get lost while driving, you ought to make a U-turn. Growing up on an island, if you got lost you did two things: 1) make sure you don't cross a bridge and 2) keep going until you see a street you know, then work your way to where you want to go from there. Eventually, if nothing else, you'd hit one of the streets on the coast (which we all knew by heart), then you'd be able to find your way. That doesn't work in NJ. The second thing that I've had to get used to is that you have to go to a liquior store to buy beer, or some bars can also sell beer to go. In NYC grocery stores and delis sell beer, and bars are forbidden from selling alcohol to be taken off premises.

I still haven't gotten used to Mischief Night though. When I was a lad two different things happened on Halloween night. Younger kids went trick-or-treating, going around to people's houses in costumes and begging for candy. Older kid armed themselves with shaving cream and eggs and had contests to see who could get messier. You might also TP the trees in front of your friends houses and all city buses had a generous coating of eggs.

New Jerseans split this event into two nights, "Mischief Night" is the night BEFORE Halloween (which would be tonight), and is reserved for TP, shave cream and eggs. Tomorrow night the kids will come a-begging.

I still trip over this. Every year I start my planning for mess clean-up assuming it will happen on Halloween, then realize that I'm a day late in my planning. Every year I start hoping and praying for rain on Halloween (when all it will do is make it miserable for the trick-or-treaters) when I ought to aim my wishes a day earlier.

Maybe someday I'll get it straightened out in my head.

Go. Watch. Listen.

I've never done this before, so I hope it works.

Hat Tip to the Anti Idiotarian Rottweiler

Follow this link, watch and listen. Tear alert.

http://www.beccycole.com/albums/videos/poster_girl.shtml

The best lyric, in my humble opinion "I'm just the girl who sings the crazy song, not qualified to sit and judge". Why can't we have more singers like her and fewer Dixie Chicks?

A little translation may be in order: "digger" is Australian for "soldier".

Buy her albums. Pass the word. Put her poster on your wall.

The Question

This morning my alarm clock went off at the usual half-past-early, I stumbled to the shower, them stumbled back to the bed to make sure my wife was awake. She asked me “Do you remember what today is?”

Now, this is NEVER a good question. It’s especially not a good question when I’m only half-awake, have yet to have my first (let alone second) cup of strong black coffee, and as-yet have no idea what the DATE is and only a sneaking suspicion of what day of the week it is. Still, I knew I had only seconds to come up with an answer of some sort, so I replied “Oh, happy anniversary!” Now I know full-well it wasn’t our wedding anniversary, but I knew it had to be the anniversary of SOMETHING or she wouldn’t have asked. All the while I’m thinking furiously, then it hits me, her father’s birthday was the other day. It was the anniversary of the day I proposed to her!

Yes, eight years ago my wife did me the honor of agreeing to marry me. This is a story worth telling. I’d picked out the ring without her knowing about it (although I was sure she suspected). I was going to take her to a nice place for dinner on Saturday evening and ask her there. She suspected something was up when I started talking about Saturday plans on Tuesday (I have trouble keeping secrets), but all was going according to plan. Until she told me that her mother called, and we were invited to a birthday dinner for her father on Saturday. Of course I agreed to go (with my stomach clenched the whole time) and she began to wonder if she was mistaken about getting engaged on Saturday. I began to go over my options. I was going to pick up the ring Saturday morning. I could wait until the following weekend, but I’d NEVER hold out that long. I could propose to her at her father’s party, but I’m not that brave. I decided to keep it simple, pick up the ring, pick up a dozen roses from the florist near her apartment (where I got her roses regularly anyway, so she wouldn’t suspect), then give her the ring and pop the question. Then we could announce our intentions at the party (assuming of course that she said "Yes").

So early Saturday morning I went to Luddies Jewelry on Staten Island, plunked down the rest of my money and saw the completed ring for the first time. Luddie (a retired cop I’d known for some time who became a jeweler) gave me a little box with a light in it for the ring (we still call that the little refridgerator), then asked me how I intended to give it to her. I replied that I was going to get a dozen roses and ask her, to which he replied that he had just the thing I needed. He handed me a plastic rose that opened up to hold a ring, perfect! So I put the ring in the rose, then stopped at the florist on the way to her apartment, putting the plastic rose into bouquet. She didn’t think anything of it when I gave her the flowers, like I said I did that fairly often. As she was trimming the stems she came to the fake rose and picked it up, remarking that it looked different, at which point I opened the top, got down on one knee and asked her to marry me.

By the way, she said yes.

Book Meme

MorningGlory tagged me with the book Meme. Books are an important part of my life, I have a three-plus hour daily commute by mass transit, and I spend most of that time reading. When my wife and I moved from our first apartment into our first house I gave away a couple hundred paperback books and STILL have four bookcases full of books. So here goes:


One book that changed your life: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Early in my Christian walk my priest/spiritual director at the time recommended it to me, I found it to be a clear, logical and concise introduction to Christianity.


One book that you’ve read more than once: I've read literally hundreds of books more than once, some seven or eight times. Every couple of years I pull out Tolkien's Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, likewise Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.


One book that you would want on a deserted island: Assuming I can pick a series of books rather than one, either the Dune series by Frank Herbert or the Gunslinger series by Stephen King. For the record, I don't consider my Bible to be a book, it's a commodity like water.


One book that made you laugh: Dave Barry's "Guide to Guys". It's a great look at what makes guys tick. For instance, if an alien landed on earth and gave a woman a simple device that would ensure world peace, end hunger and give an infinite amount a free energy she'd bring it immediately to the leader of whatever country she lives in. A guy will take it apart to try to figure out how it works.


One book that made you cry: There's a line in a short story called "Hunters of the Sky Cave" in Poul Andersen's "Agents of the Terran Empire" that always chokes me up. Dominic Flandry (the agent in the book title) is discussing the impending collapse of the Terran Empire he serves and the age of barbarism (the Long Night) that will ensue. He says (and I'm quoting from memory, but this is the gist of it) that anyone with any sense knows that the Long Night is coming, but they also know that it won't come within their lifetimes. So they turn up their collar, and curse at the cold, and amuse themselves playing with a few brightly-colored, dead leaves. Hits kinda close to home.


One book you wish had been written: The Man's Guide to Understanding Women.


One book you wish had never been written: The Communist Manifesto. While drawing on concepts from Das Kapital, the Manifesto popularized the ideas and brought forth a philosophy that has killed more people in the last century than any other including Nazism. I had to read it in college (I had a philosophy teacher who was a die-hard Communist). I thought it was drivel then and my opinion of it hasn't improved since.


One book you are currently reading: "Enemy at the Gates" about the battle for Stalingrad during World War II. I first developed an interest in the Eastern Front of World War II many years ago when my Dad and I would watch a TV series called "The Unknown War", about the Russian side of the war. I got more interested when I got a Mosin Nagant rifle for Christmas, and a couple weeks ago I saw a copy of Enemy at the Gates in the used-book section of Barnes and Noble. (For the record, if anyone knows where I can get a copy of The Unknown War PLEASE let me know!). My wife just rolled her eyes when I pointed out that the rifle on the cover (itself a copy of the movie poster) had the bolt on the wrong side.


One book you have been meaning to read: I have a collected works of Shakespeare that I've barely cracked.

Where Were You Five Years Ago Today?

September 11, 2001 was a beautiful fall day. The sky was blue, the day was mild. I'd gotten up a little late that morning. My wife suggested that I should take the later train (about 40 minutes later), but I really wanted to stop in Borders Bookstore in the World Trade Center that morning. I did that once every couple of weeks, just to browse thru the books. So I pushed myself out the door, drove to the train station, and caught my usual train which took me to Hoboken, NJ. From there I took the Path train to the World Trade Center, but completely forgot that I wanted to stop at Borders, and entered the Courtlandt St subway station. After I paid my subway fare I remembered that I'd intended to stop at Borders, but decided that I'd either stop tonight on the way home or tomorrow morning. The time was about 8:10. I got my usual R train and headed into Brooklyn, just as I had every work day for the last several years. I arrived, as usual, at my desk at about 8:30.

About 9:00 a co-worker came in and told us that a plane had apparently hit the World Trade Center, that he saw the smoke on his way in. We turned on a radio and heard that a small plane had hit the North Tower. It seemed like an accident. As the news rolled in, we learned that it was a passenger jet, not a small plane, that hit the tower. Then the South Tower was hit. Then there were reports of a plane hitting the Pentagon. I called my wife to tell her I was OK, she said they were watching the news on a TV. I thought it was a little odd that she didn't seem concerned about me since my commute took me thru the World Trade Center, but I decided not to press the issue.

A few of us decided to walk down to the East River to see what was happening, when we got there my first impression was that there was a lot of paper in the air, apparently sucked from the towers. There was a huge hole in the North Tower, full of flames. The South Tower was partially hidden from view by the North, but it was obvious that it was burning too. We were too far away to see the people falling, we didn't hear about that until later.

At this point I was thinking that the fire department would evacuate the buildings, put out the fires, and then something would need to be done to repair the towers. It never occured to me that the towers might be too badly damaged to repair. Then the South Tower (or what I could see of it behind the North Tower) sort of tipped at the top, then collapsed in a rain of dust and debris.

I didn't have another coherent thought for the rest of the day.

I couldn't stay there anymore, we left, headed back to our office building, where we found that the building (a New York City municipal building) was evacuated and locked down, we weren't allowed back in. We met up with our manager, and we all went to her apartment a few blocks away. On the way I stopped in a store for a bottle of soda and learned that the North Tower had collapsed, but I was numb at that point. I remember repeatedly thinking "This day needs to be over."

Since New York City was pretty much locked down I couldn't get home, so I and some others spent the night at our managers apartment. The next morning we decided not to open, and by then the transportation system was functioning, so I headed for home via the Path train in Mid-town Manhattan. Everyone I saw on the way home had a thousand-yard stare, like they were in shock. From the train I could see the smoke rising from where the towers had been, that column of smoke would be part of the landscape for a long time.

I arrived home in the early afternoon. My wife arrived home from work at her usual hour. As we talked about the events of the previous day I mentioned that I'd been in the basement of the World Trade center a half-hour before the first plane hit. She sat bolt upright and said "You were WHAT?" She'd completely forgotten that my daily commute too me thru the World Trade Center, which was just as well or she'd have been beside herself with worry.

Do not forget what happened that day. Do not forget what you were doing, where you were. Do not forget that three thousand people who did nothing more sinister than show up for work or ride a plane died that day. Do not forget that those people were murdered, they did not die in a natural disaster. Do not forget who murdered them.

Meat Loaf

My wife made meat loaf last night for dinner. For those who don't know, that is one of my absolute favorite meals. My mother made meat loaf, and although hers was uninspired (just beef) it was good. In my single days I'd eat meat loaf at Boston Market when I felt like treating myself to a "good" meal (meaning one that wasn't frozen, pizza or Burger King). Meat loaf is my comfort food. My wife tells me that her meat loaf never tastes the same way twice, all I know is that it's uniformly good, it's never been dry and it's always very tasty. You will NEVER hear me say "Oh no, meat loaf again!" (ten points if you can identify what movie that's from!).

I need a napkin, I'm slobbering just thinking about it!

I had an English teacher in High School who used to tell stories about his mother's cooking, one of her "specialties" was meat loaf. Her version of meat loaf was simplicity itself, throw a couple pounds of chopped meat in a pan and bake. She noticed that it tended to fall apart though, so she sought some method of holding it together. Research showed that the French cooked with peanut oil, so she decided to make French meat loaf. Not having any peanut oil though, she substituted peanut butter. She forgot to put on oven mitts when she took it out of the oven and dropped the glass pan, the pan broke and the meat loaf didn't. My teacher told us to try to imagine burnt meat loaf that stuck to the roof of your mouth.

I'd share my wife's recipe here, but I really don't know it. I know there's a mixture of beef, pork and veal, there's carmelized onions in it, and there's a glaze on top made of, I think, catsup. Maybe she'll share the recipe if enough readers ask nicely in the comments.

Dad's Stories - Part 4

It's been a while since I've put down some of Dad's stories, so here's the next batch. As always I'll promise that they are all true, or at least that they ought to be.

Dad worked in a shipyard among his many jobs. Since, as I've mentioned before, he had no fear of height at all, his job was to do the fitting on masts and such. This presented a problem at lunchtime, because he was expected to stay on top of the mast until the lunch whistle blew, upon which he'd have to climb down. The climb cut into his lunch break, which was only a half-hour as it was. To get around this he'd have his friend the crane operator swing the hook of the crane over to him, he'd sit on the ball over the hook and ride down on that. This was of course against the safety regulations, and it so happened that the government safety inspector was there one day when Dad took his ride. The inspector suspended him from working at the shipyard for a period of time, but since he was one of the few workers who'd go up the mast he was back at work the next day.

You may think being up at the top of a mast of a ship would keep you awake, but one day Dad fell asleep up there, leaning against the mast inside the crows nest (I suspect he had a long night the night before). A woman in a house across the road from the shipyard saw him hunched over and ran to the shipyard to tell them that their man had apparently died up on the mast. I'd imagine Dad's co-workers weren't to happy when they climbed up there to see what was wrong and found him alseep.

Last shipyard story for now. One day Dad was painting the lifeboat davits (these are the crane-like things that are used to lower the lifeboats). He was priming them with stuff called red lead, it's basically a water-proofing paint. He'd go from davit to davit with a five gallon bucket of the stuff, painting as he went. Well one time when he picked up the bucket the handle broke off, the bucket of paint fell over the side, hit a wooden scaffold (thankfully one that wasn't occupied at the time) which acted like a springboard and sprayed red lead all over the (freshly painted) side of the ship. Dad's foreman blamed him until Dad showed him that he still had the handle of the bucket.

When I was a tyke my Dad worked in a couple of different hospitals (which shall remain nameless in case either of my readers someday find themselves in one of them). He did general repair, from unclogging drains to changing locks. His time at the hospitals gave him a disrespect for doctors, while he admitted that some of them were very intelligent, many of them had no common sense. One of the doctors got a new blood-pressure machine, the type mounted on the wall that uses a column of mercury. It was mounted, but the mercury hadn't been added yet. The doctor decided to fill the column himself, but unfortunately neglected to remove the plug at the top first. Undaunted by the sight of mercury running down the side of the column, he kept pouring until the bottle was empty, then, upon seeing that the column was still empty he called for help. Dad realized what the problem was, and further realized that the mercury needed to be cleaned up. Today a hazmat team would probably respond, but back then Dad went around the floor with a spoon and a tongue depresser picking up globs of mercury and putting it back in the bottle, after which he removed the plug and filled the column without spillage.

Another time Dad got a call of a burst pipe in an area of the hospital, so he went to investigate. Upon entering the office where the leak was, he saw the doctor whose office it was sitting at his desk while having water leak from the ceiling onto his head. The doctor looked up and informed my Dad that there was water leaking from the ceiling (no flies on him!). Dad replied (in his most diplomatic tone) that he could see that, and pointed out that he (the doctor) was getting wet. The doc asked Dad if he thought he ought to move.

We Need to Change

I'm not angry, comparing anger to what I feel is like comparing a guttering match to the sun. I'm not enraged, that's entirely too polite a term. I am well and truly pissed off.

We capture terrorists, without uniforms, we fly them to a Caribean island where they get three hot meals a day that meet the requirements of their religion, prayer mats, Korans and when we try to extract information from them by depriving them of sleep we're called torturers. When three of them decide to hang themselves we're held responsible for their deaths.

Then two of our soldiers, in uniform, completely identifiable as American soldiers and perfectly distinguishable from any civilian in the area, are captured. They have their genitals cut off and stuffed in their mouths. They have their eyes gouged out. They have their heads cut off. Their mutilated corpses are intentionally left in a place where they'll be found by other Americans and their bodies are booby trapped as is the area around them in hopes of killing yet more Americans. There's no outrage flowing from this. Two men died a horrible death at the hands of monsters and there's no outrage, while terrorists are photographed with underwear over their heads and we're called brutal.

Yet we have people insisting that we must play by civilized rules in dealing with the terrorists. We have people claiming that the terrorists must be treated according to the Geneva Convention, ignoring the fact that the Geneva Convention allows combatants without command structure, who don't carry arms openly and who wear no identification to show that they are in fact legal combatants to be shot on sight. They ignore the fact that the Geneva Convention is intended to be adhered to by BOTH sides of a conflict, otherwise the agreement is void.

We need to change how we fight the War on Terror. First, we need to get rid of the imbedded reporters. Why? They lead to too many Monday Morning Quarterbacks. When one of our warriors has to make a decision in a matter of seconds, when making the wrong decision could kill him and his comrades, but then that decision is endlessly analysed in slow motion by people in safe, comfortable offices to see if he may have been able to decide otherwise, well as they say that dog just won't hunt. I'm not a veteran, I've never been in combat. I, unlike so many of my self-proclaimed intellectual betters in the news media, won't second-guess anyone for what they do in the heat of combat. The grunt on the ground doesn't have the advantage of all the information that will later be gathered after the smoke clears, he doesn't have access to video tapes and satelite images to tell him exactly what's happening around him and, even if he had access to all this information, he wouldn't have time to sit down and analyze it to make a completely informed decision before he and his buddies are killed. He has to make a decision now, not tomorrow, not in ten minutes, but right this very second. In combat the best thing you can do is the right thing, the second-best thing you can do is the wrong thing, and the absolute worst thing you can do it nothing.

Second, we have to put the blame for civilian deaths exactly where it belongs. Few German civilians were killed by American troops on the ground during World War II. Why? Because when the German army occupied a town to set up a defensive position the civilians moved out, and because the German military wore uniforms so that the Allies could tell at a glance if a person running across the street was a soldier (and thereby a target) or a civilian (and therefore not a target). The Germans didn't fire from civilian occupied buildings while dressed as civilians themselves so that when the Allied troops entered the building they couldn't tell who fired on them. If the terrorists don't want their civilians killed they have to stop making themselves look like civilians while attacking American troops. They have to clear the civilians out of an area before setting up shop. We, for our part, need to support those warriors who make these difficult decisions, stop insisting that they do the impossible and spare civilians while killing the indistinguishable terrorists, and stop blaming our troops when it turns out that someone they killed wasn't a terrorist.

Lastly, we have to stop insisting that our troops fight a civilized war when their enemies are anything but civilized. This war isn't a football game where both sides fight according to previously agreed upon rules and where some impartial third party determines when a foul has occurred and what the penalty shall be. From the very start the terrorists have failed to fight according to any recognized standard, targetting civilians, murdering prisoners, and disguising combatants as non-combatants. Spare me the argument that acting in a similar manner will "bring us down to their level". We are at war, war is organized barbarism, and the nation that's more efficiently barbaric will not only win, it will bring a speedier end to the war. Kim Du Toit gave the best analogy I've seen yet, we can't insist that our boxer go into the ring and fight under the Queensbury rules and watch helplessly as his opponent enters the ring armed with a flamethrower.

Yes, I know, it took me over a week to write this. Part of me was processing the events and trying to make something coherent out of a white-hot cloud of pure emotion. Another part was hoping that the media would respond with some outrage, but instead (and predictably) they responded with stories about Abu Gharib and Gitmo. They responded by saying that our men and women in uniform are no better than the animals who castrated, mutilated, and decapidated two of our citizen soldiers. They drew a moral equivalence between those who broke the rules, in a rather mild way really, and were punished for their transgressions, and those who committed attrocities and who are hailed as heroes. The only outrage I've found has been by my fellow amatuer journalists in the blogosphere and by the common folks I've spoken to. So much for the relevancy of the mainstream media.

Reflections on my 43rd Lap Around the Sun

Today, June 15th 2006, marks the 43rd anniversary of the day Dr Shernlank (I am not making that name up) caught me as my mother pushed me screaming into this world. A lot has happened to the world in 43 years.

If you're about my age, you probably know how to do long division, but you'd rather use a calculator. You may know how to use a sliderule, but you still prefer a calculator.

You remember stacking records on a spindle on a turntable, where they'd drop down to play. You had to turn them over to play the other side. 45's had a big hole in the middle you had to fill with this little plastic thingy.

My mother made iced tea with tea bags in a big pot, she'd pour it into empty instant coffee jars and put it in the fridge.

Speaking of instant coffee, this stuff is the reason I hated coffee until I discovered that some people actually brewed coffee.

Boys played with toy guns. This wasn't cause for concern by parents, teachers or school administrators. Girls played with dolls. Boys and girls seldom played together unless the girl was a tomboy, then she was just another boy. Boys thought girls were yucky, girls thought boys were yucky, the boys would outgrow this but the girls wouldn't.

You were expected to get dirty when you played, especially if the play involved Tonka trucks in the yard.

The cure for hyperactivity was to go outside and play.

Pong was the extent of home video games. You could go to the Arcade at the Mall to play video games for a quarter a play.

TV had seven working channels, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. Channel 7 had the 4:30 movie every day.

There were no video rental stores because there were no video tapes or DVD's, if you wanted to see a movie you went to the movies or you waited for it to come on TV.

Wrestling was on channel 42 or 47 UHF, the announcers only spoke Spanish.

The grammer school principal had a paddle. If you misbehaved you went up on the stage during Assembly, assumed the position, and got your butt whacked in front of everyone. The pain was bad, the humiliation was worse, and the thought of what your parents would do to you when you got home was worst of all.

Teachers didn't care about your self esteem, if you didn't learn the material you got a failing grade. If you got too many failing grades you got left back.

There were no mini-vans, there were a few SUVs that were basically short pick-up trucks with seats in back. Families had station wagons. There were no car seats, and nobody wore seatbelts.

The first computer hard-drive I ever saw advertized was in a Radio Shack catalog, it held 8.4 MB (not GB) and cost $4,995. It was about the size of the CPU case on my current computer. Dell currently lists a 1,000 GB (or one terabyte if you prefer) drive for $1,000.

Most cars didn't have air conditioning, power windows or power locks. You couldn't unlock the car from a distance, you had to use the key, but few people bothered to lock the car anyway. Lots of people just left the keys in the ignition. Nobody had car alarms.

Most bikes had one speed, some had three, some had five, and the most any bike had was ten. Nobody wore a helmet to ride a bike. These same people often didn't hold the handlebars while they rode. Bikes came in boys and girls types.

The Star Trek communicator was a futuristic piece of equipment, not something everyone had on their belt or in their pocket or purse.

We landed on the moon. We were going to Mars. In 2001 we'd be going to Jupiter (Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick said so!).

The Russians wanted to nuke us, but didn't dare because they knew we'd nuke them back. Mutually Assured Destruction kept everyone safe.

In High School we discected once-living frogs, grasshoppers and earthworms. Some classes did clams too, those students vowed never to eat another clam. There were periodic small explosions in the Chemistry lab, and there were often noxious smells coming from there.

On Sunday mornings we read the funnies. Mom made dinner early on Sunday, then there was usually a movie on TV in the afternoon.

There were no CDs, DVDs, VCRs or home computers. People bought TVs and stereos, not home entertainment systems. We read books made of paper.

Yes, a lot has changed. The world is better in some ways, worse in others, different in many. We've come further than we'd ever dreamed and failed to accomplish many of the things we expected.

A Good Terrorist

The other morning the radio awoke me at the usual un-Godly hour with the news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by an American air-strike. This was certainly good news to start the day, any time a terrorist gets sent to someplace considerably hotter than Iraq is cause for celebration. The news hit after the press-time of the free (and worth every penny!) morning paper I get in the morning, so I had to wait until the next morning to read about it.

News is a funny thing. Actual news, meaning the who, what, when and how of an event, has a shelf-life of about twenty-four hours. This means that if news breaks in the morning by the time a morning newspaper runs it it's already getting stale. Newspapers don't stop running news stories just because the news is stale though, oh no. Doing so would lead people to believe that the newspaper exists to inform its readers rather than to expose them to advertizing (I go into much greater detail on this in one of my very early entries entitled The Media).

So what's a newspaper editor to do? Everybody knows that al-Zarqawi found himself fatally near 1,000 pounds of smart-bombs when they detonated, that's not news anymore. What we now get is commentary, and todays throwaway is running with the story that al-Z's death doesn't mean anything, that the insurgency will continue, and that the father of Nick Berg (who was decapitated by al-Zarqawi) is sad that another person had to die and blames George Bush for his son's death.

Of course when all else fails, you can always do man-in-the-street interviews to see if people think the insurgency will end now. One of the randomly-selected experts on insurgency said that if he were a terrorist the death of his leader would inspire him to fight harder. I have some news for him, it doesn't matter how hard a terrorist fights, to be successful he has to fight smart. Any idiot with a room-temperature IQ can wrap himself in exposives and blow himself up, but getting the explosives, recruiting, planning, and deciding where to send him as part of a co-ordinated attack requires a smart and talented leader. By all accounts al-Zarqawi was such a leader.

We'll see. Maybe someone will step in and fill al-Zarqawi's shoes. Maybe the insurgency will crumble without his leadership. I don't know and any prediction I may make would be strictly a guess, just like the predictions I read in the newspaper.

Predictions are funny things, if you happen to be right everyone thinks you're a genius. If you're wrong everybody will forget that you made the prediction. I predicted twenty years ago that music CDs wouldn't take hold, that they'd be replaced any day now by Digital Audio Tape and that anyone who had a CD player would end up with the equivalent of an eight-track player. Had I been right people who heard me say it would be marvelling today at my insight. As it is I'll bet no one remembers.

So will the insurgency continue? I don't know, it might, it might not. I do know that if al-Zaqwari were still alive it most assuredly WOULD continue. I know we have enough bombs to take out his successor if there is one.

Let me head off the comments about Osama Bin Laden right now. Yes, I'll read his obituary with great satisfaction too, but in terms of the War on Terror he's a non-issue. He's in hiding someplace (assuming he's not already dead), he's not running anything. He hasn't even released a video tape in years, just a couple audio tapes. We'll catch up to him someday, but al-Zaqwari was actually leading terrorists in attacks against Americans, getting him was a priority.

Not a Word

This morning the radio had repeated "news" stories about the fact that today is 6/6/06 and wondering if today would mark the arrival of the Anti-Christ and the beginning of the end of the world. The fact that a movie opens today on this topic is completely coincidental I'm sure. The throwaway newspaper had similar articles, and neither had anything about the more significant meaning of this date. In fact no one but a couple bloggers even noted the date.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Folks, today is June 6. Does that date ring a bell? If not, let's try a little harder. June 6, 1944. Omaha. Utah. Sword. Night of Nights. Normandy.

If you don't get it turn on your TV and DVD right now and watch Band of Brothers in its entirety, from start to finish, including the bonus material, without a bathroom break. No fair fast-forwarding either. When that's done watch Saving Private Ryan.

Sixty-two years ago marked the beginning of the end, not of the world, but of World War II. Once the Allies had a foothold in France the war was lost by Germany, it was only a matter of time.

I've said it before on these pages, the Greatest Generation is dying off rapidly, the men who served in World War II are now in their eighties. If you know any talk to them, get their stories now before it's too late. And thank them.

Answering Machine Message

Hello, you've reached the home of Mark and Mark's Wife. We can't come to the phone right now. We are the only two humans who live here. If you don't want to speak to either of us hang up now, you won't get in touch with anyone else here. We speak English here. Neither of us is fluent in any other language, so if you don't speak English hang up, we won't understand you and you won't understand us. We're perfectly happy with our insurance, phone service, Internet access, exterminator, financial advisor and mortgage. Even if we weren't we wouldn't do business with you on the basis of a cold call, so don't waste your time or ours by leaving a message. Our siding, gutters and roof are in good condition, our chimney is clean, our furnace is in good repair, and our basement is waterproofed already. We're not interested in selling our home, buying a new home, buying a vacation home or buying a timeshare. We already give generously to a variety of charities, we don't decide which on the basis of messages left on our answering machine. We really don't believe you're calling to give us a free trip, a free camera, a free computer, or a free anything else. We're not fish, we know bait when we see it. We don't believe we've already won a million dollars. If you are a machine with a recorded message try to ignore the irony of two machines talking to each other and leave your message, we'll have our toaster get back to you. Please note that by leaving a message we offer no warranty, express or implied, that we will get the message or that we will return your call. If you still want to leave a message please do so after the beep. Or don't, it's entirely up to you. Beeeeeep

In Honor of Mother's Day

I didn't have a chance to post this over the weekend, but better late than never.


When God Created Mothers
by Erma Bombeck

When the good Lord was creating mothers, he was into his sixth day of overtime, when an angel appeared and said, "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one."

And the Lord said, "Have you read the spec on this one? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic; have 180 moveable parts, all replaceable; run on black coffee and leftovers; have a lap that disappears when she stands up, a kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair, and six pair of hands.

"The angel shook her head slowly and said,"Six pairs of hands...no way."

"It's not the hands that are causing me problems," said the Lord."It's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have."

"That's on the standard model?" asked the angel.

The Lord nodded. "One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, "What are you kids doing in there?" when she already knows. Another here, in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't, but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say, "I understand and I love you," without so much as uttering a word."

"Lord,"said the angel, touching his sleeve gently, "Rest for now. Tomorrow..."

"I can't," said the Lord. "I'm so close to creating something close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick, can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger and can get a nine year old to stand under a shower."

The angel circled the model of the mother very slowly. "She's too soft," she sighed.

"But tough!" said the Lord excitedly. "You cannot imagine what the mother can do or endure."

"Can she think?"

"Not only think, but she can reason and compromise," said the Creator. Finally the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek. "There's a leak," she pronounced. "I told you, you were trying to put too much into this model."

"It's not a leak," said the Lord. "It's a tear."

"What's it for?"

"It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness and pride."

"You're a genius," said the angel.

The Lord looked somber, "I didn't put it there."

Mark D writing again:
My own mother died in 1990, May 24 to be exact. She was tough as an old boot and mules used to say among themselves "That woman is STUBBORN". She could produce more good food with less money than anyone I'd ever met. For instance after my Dad was disabled at work in the mid '70's their entire income was from Worker's Comp until the Disability Social Security kicked in (which given the inefficiencies of the Federal Government took a long time). The Worker's Comp check was $183.80 every two weeks, rent was $214 a month and she fed two adults and an 11 year old boy (the definition of skin stretched around an appetite), never borrowed money, never paid rent or utilities late, and we never went hungry. She'd walk to the electric company to pay the bill to save the money on the stamp and money order (never had a checking account). I remember those days, lots of pasta, lots of chicken. She was a high-school drop out, her mother took her out of school to help care for her eight siblings, but I've often referred to her as an uneducated genius, no one maintains a household like that without a good supply of brains. She loved animals, the last four pets she had were strays she picked up or animals that were too old to get by with other, younger animals that people had.

I'd be remiss now if I didn't mention my mother-in-law, who welcomed me into her family with open arms as she did the wives of my wife's three brothers. "Like a mother to me" is about the biggest compliment I can give any woman, and she is. It took me a couple months to start calling her "Mom" after my wife and I got married, but one day it just popped out and seemed right and that's what I've called her ever since.

TV Complaints

One thing that drives me nuts when I watch a TV show or movie is when the show presents information about things I know about, and the information is so completely wrong it's insane. Since I know a lot about computers, and history, and science this happens pretty often, which explains why I don't watch much TV.

The topic where it makes me the most crazy is guns though. Every time I see a bullet spark when it hits something I cringe, and I've seen movie bullets spark when they hit TREES.

I'm going to give some spoilers for last night's episode of House, so if you didn't see it yet and plan to stop reading.

What little I saw of this show last night, before I retired grumbling to the bedroom, revolved around a police officer who'd been shot, the bullet hit his vest, fragmented, and fragments shot upward and hit his eye socket lodging in his brain. We'll leave alone the fact that soft body armor is intended to capture a bullet, not fragment it, it COULD have hit something hard in his pocket before reaching the vest.

This being the show that it is, the cop had other serious medical issues besides hunks of metal in his skull. The preferred diagnostic was an MRI, but the doctors were afraid to perform an MRI because he was shot with a .38 Special hollowpoint, and those bullets are ferro-magnetic.

Huh?

I've fired and seen thousands of rounds of .38 Special cartidges, both hollowpoint and non-hollowpoint. Most have been basic lead alloys, some have been lead alloys with copper jackets. "ferro" means iron (I guess ferro sounds better than iron). Still, I guess it's possible that someone manufactured rounds with iron-based bullets (they used to make them in .22 specifically for use in shooting galleries with steel targets just so they would spark, they also wore out rifle barrels in a hurry). I have to ask myself why any sane engineer would design iron hollowpoint bullets for a .38 though. Hollowpoints are intended to expand to create a bigger wound and also to keep the slug from going completely thru the intended target and hitting someone else. The .38 Special is a low-velocity round, so if a bullet is going to expand it has to be made of soft stuff. Now what's softer, lead or iron?????

But wait, there's more! Our hero decides to test if the bullet in question posed a problem in an MRI, so he gets a similar cartridge, loads it in a revolver, and brings it to the morgue where he shoots a corpse with it, they then MRI the corpse to see what the bullet did.

Now, I'm no doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but I know enough about both bullets and MRI machines to figure out if a particular bullet would cause a problem in an MRI without having to use someone's dead relative for a test. I'd start by bringing my bullet, not to the morgue, but to the kitchen. I'd then pull a magnet off of the refridgerator and see if it would stick to the bullet. If so I know I'd have a problem. If not I'd probably, just for the sake of safety, pull the bullet from the cartridge and just MRI the bullet, if it flew in the machine I know we'd have a problem, if not I'd know we wouldn't.

Of course this wouldn't make for very good theater, which is the bottom line here. It's much more dramatic to make up a problem where one wouldn't exist in reality. It's much more dramatic to have a shocking method of determining if there's a problem than a simple method.

What happened? I didn't watch that far, maybe my wife will answer in the comments (hint hint).

The Gospel of Judas

There's been a good amount of buzz regarding the recent translation into English of the only known copy of the Gospel of Judas. This event was heralded as providing new insight into Christianity, particularly early Christianity. Since I'm a Christian, I tend to be cautious about new insights into Christianity, believing as I do that the insights that have been around for the last 2,000 years are quite adequate. Still, if someone insists upon talking at me about these new insights, it's only common courtesy that I inform myself about what they're talking about, so I found a copy of the translation online, downloaded it, and read it.

I now offer my view of it: It's typical of Gnosticism, which makes it fundamentally contrary to Christian belief. I'm in good company here, since in about 180 AD Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, discussed this very document, referring to it as a fictional account. The premise of the Gnostic gospels I have some familiarity with is that Jesus took the person for whom the gospel is named aside and imparted to him or her information that wasn't offered to the other Apostles. The Gnostic gospel then supposedly reveals this secret information which is supposed to be only for the inner circle.

Horsefeathers.

First of all, Christianity is an open book, open to all. The Church was at its very lowest during those times in history when it attempted to limit popular access to the basic tenets of Christianity, for instance in insisting that Scripture only be available in Latin when only priests could read Latin. Christianity is no mystery religion. Anything you could want to know about the official beliefs of the Church is available to you, go to your nearest bookstore and buy a Bible. Even the traditional interpretations of Scripture are freely available, for the Roman Catholic Church in the Catechism, for the Anglican Church in the Book of Common Prayer, and in similar texts for other denominations.

Secondly, and perhaps more tellingly, there's the issue of the overall availabilty of this "new" gospel. Some scholars are insisting that Gnosticism was as widely practiced in the early Church as Orthodox Christianity. If that were true there should be many more copies of the Gospel of Judas in existence. If it were that widely circulated and followed it wouldn't be all but lost. Perhaps you believe that the Church prevented the desemination of this document? If Gnosticism was an important branch of Christianity it would have flourished anyway, Christianity itself was illegal for the first four centuries of its existence but the documents which make up the New Testament survived. Even the Roman Catholic Church at the height of its power, during the Inquisition, couldn't stamp out the Protestant Reformation but ultimately had to recognize Protestantism as another form of Christianity. Even today Christianity survives, even thrives, in places like China and the Middle East where Christian practice is a punishable offense, sometimes even a capital offense.

Thirdly, the basic doctrine behind Gnosticism is fundamentally opposed to Christian doctrine. Gnosticism teaches that humans are spiritual beings trapped in physical bodies, that the physical world is evil at worst and irrelevant at best. Therefore Jesus could not have been fully human and fully Divine and the Ressurection (THE central event in Christianity) could never have occurred.

Gnosticism wasn't just another branch of Christianity that was stamped out by the early Church, it's a belief that was found to be opposed to the most basic doctrines of Christianity and was therefore rejected. Christ doesn't offer anything to some followers and not to others. He doesn't take some followers aside to whisper mysteries in their ears that the rest of the world isn't privvy to. What He offers He offers to everyone.

The four Canonical Gospels (those found in the Bible) are in agreement regarding the central concepts of Christian doctrine. Yes, there are differences in detail and emphasis, as you would expect on reading four accounts of the same events written by four different people and also written with four different communities of Christians as the intended audience (for instance, Matthew appears to have been written with Christians who were formerly Jews in mind, while Luke appears to have been written for Pagan converts). The important doctrines, that Jesus lived at a certain time in history, that He taught and performed miracles, that He was crucified, that He died, and that He rose from the dead are all found in all four Gospels.

Just because a document is refered to as a "gospel" and it deals with events in the life of Jesus doesn't mean it gives insight into Christianity. Someone could write a fictional account (the very term used by Irenaeus whom I mention above) of the life of Abraham Lincoln, that doesn't offer insight into America during the Civil War.

If you want to know about the life of Jesus read the four canonical Gospels. Treat the doctrines found in the other gospels as beliefs that were tried by the early church and were found wanting.

Success and Failure

If you've read my previous posts you know that I consider America to be the best place in the world to live in. One thing that separates us from other nations is the ability it gives people to succeed. Let me offer an example. You've probably seen the TV show American Idol, or at least heard of it. People compete on this show for an opportunity to become a pop-music star, with a record contract and all the trimmings. Everyone who auditions does so with dreams of success. Some people back those dreams with considerable talent, others with much less. Still, anyone who shows up can audition. I could audition, and I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. If I were to show up to audition I wouldn't be turned away because my parents weren't singers, or because I didn't study singing at the right school. I'd be sent away because I don't sing well. I'd fail, but the only thing standing between me and success would be my own ability.

Some societies force people to be mediocre, to stay as close as possible to the average. People in such societies are forced into a washed-out pastel existence on a faded great background. There are few failures and just as few successes.

We, on the other hand, reward success and we give people the chance to succeed. That chance to succeed is also the chance to fail, because you can't succeed if you don't risk failure. We give people buckets of vibrant, brightly colored paint and a pure white canvas to paint on. Sometimes the results are beautiful, sometimes terrible, but seldom dull and lifeless.

If you want to understand our typically American attitude toward success you could do worse than to read some things that Thomas A. Edison said on the topic. Edison was, of course, one of the most successful inventors in America (which tends to make him one of the most successful inventors in the entire world). He describes success as one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. He said at one point that he hadn't failed, he merely found ten thousand ways to do something that didn't work. He said he knew five thousand ways NOT to build a light bulb. Perhaps most poigantly, he said that most people fail because they didn't realize how close they were to success when they stopped trying.

Once you've eliminated actual barriers to success (for instance Michael Jordan could NEVER be a great jockey no matter how hard he tried) the rest comes down to ability and hard work. If you want to succeed at something, if you have the basic ability to do it, and if you have the will to work hard enough to make it happen you can do so. If that's not a recommendation for the way we do things I don't know what is.

The Dubai Ports Deal

I don't normally comment too much on current events, especially current political events, but I'll make an exception here.

If you haven't been paying attention, there was a proposal to turn over control of a number of major American shipping ports to a company run by the government of the United Arab Emerites (UAE). This caused concern for a great many people (yours truly included) due to the possibility of a large-scale weapon entering the port in a shipping container. Opposition to this was pretty much bi-partisan, except that the president supported the deal. Now, I thought I had our president pretty-well figured out, whatever else he is or isn't he's tough on terrorism. His support for this deal amazed me, I just couldn't understand it.

I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories. If your only proof for something is that it might have happened and no one can prove it didn't, well frankly that's just not good enough for me. I also think that GWB, whatever his flaws, has a deep love for America and doesn't want to see it harmed. (If you don't believe this, you may as well click to another site now.) So I'm left with the conclusion that the Dubai deal wasn't a bad thing for the nation, but I just couldn't see how that could be. When I read that President Bush had "bowed to the pressure of Republican lawmakers to call off the deal" it hit me. The answer is politics.

No one in the White House is going any further. President Bush can't run again. VP Cheney will probably retire at the end of his term (if not bef0re). They have nothing to lose by taking an unpopular stance, approval ratings for the President and Vice President are completely meaningless. However, the mid-term elections are coming up, a number of Congressmen and Senators are coming up for re-election. If the President takes an unpopular stand that allows those lawmakers coming up for re-election to take a popular stand, and not long before the 2006 elections. I don't think this deal was ever meant to go thru, but the opposition had to come from people who could benefit from it.

So President Bush takes one for the team, it doesn't do him any harm, and it gives his fellow Republican lawmakers the opportunity to look good, to apparently go against the President, and to come out as being tough on terrorism. Democrats, on the other hand, had to take a calculated stand since this is the same party that opposes racial profiling, and opposition to the ports deal looks an awful lot like racial profiling.

If I'm right about this (and I'll probably never find out for sure) this was a politically brilliant move, let people who have nothing to lose be unpopular, let your own folks take a popular stand, and let the other side have to decide which group of constituents to alienate. Like I said, brilliant.

God and Free Will

This entry grew as a side-issue to part 2 of my Science and Faith entry which I'm still laboring at. If nothing else my labors there have provided ideas for more entries.

If you believe in God you've probably encountered the argument, advanced by someone trying to convince you of the non-existence of God, that belief in God is incompatible with belief in free will. The argument usually goes something like "Does God know everything" to you which you reply "Yes". "So God knows what you're going to do tomorrow?" "Yes" "Therefore you don't have free will, since what you're going to do has already been determined! You either have free will and God doesn't exist, or God exists and controls everything you do!"

In Einstein's view of the universe time is a dimension, just like the three dimensions of space. You understand this in a practical sense too, when you're approaching a road intersection you don't worry about whether a car went thru the intersection ten minutes ago, or whether one will go thru ten minutes from now, you concern yourself with whether another car will be in the intersection at the same time your car is because that's what causes a traffic accident.

Let's assume that you have free will. You carry a chair into a house and, using your free will, you place it someplace in the three-dimensional space within that house. I walk in afterward and observe where you've placed the chair. Does my observation of where you placed the chair mean that you didn't exercise free will in placing it there? People are capable of moving around in three-dimensional space fairly freely, but we can only move thru the fourth dimension of time in one direction, from past to future, and we MUST move thru it, we can't make it stand still.

God, on the other hand, is an Eternal Being. That doesn't just mean He lives for a very long time, or even an infinite time. It means He exists OUTSIDE of time. He can move freely thru the dimension of time as easily as we move thru the three dimensions of space. He can look forward in time as far as He wishes to see what happens. As a matter of fact if He wants to know what I'll do tomorrow He MUST look forward in time to see what I'll do, since because I have free will the only way He can find out is thru observation.

If I may be permitted a digression, this ability of God to move thru time as He wishes has ramifications in our prayer life. Suppose someone I care for is scheduled to have surgery at 2:00 in the afternoon. I decide that at lunch time that day I'll find a quite place to pray for a successful operation, so at noon I leave my office where I'm likely to be distracted and go to my chosen place to pray. When I return I have a voice mail telling the that early that morning the surgery was rescheduled to 9:00 am and was over even before I began to pray. Was my prayer wasted? It was not, because God could move ahead to noontime to hear my prayer, then move back to 9:00 to apply my prayers to the surgery.

Free will is an essential aspect of our relationship with God. The only way we can love someone is to be free not to, that goes for each other, and it goes for us loving God too. There have been plenty of movies made about what happens when someone gives someone else a love potion, it's generally unsatisfying for the person who gave the potion precisely because the other person wasn't free not to fall in love. If you look around you'll see a great many people who have no love for God. That's the price God is willing to pay in order that some people will love Him freely.

Who Says You Can't Train Cats?

Since I'm struggling with part 2 of my Science and Faith entry, I thought I'd post a little comic relief.

My wife and I are jointly owned by three cats, all of which I brought to the marriage. We generally keep the family-room furniture covered with old sheets to keep the fur off, and uncover it when we have company. The cats have learned too, when the furniture is covered they can go up on it, when it's not they can't, so when the covers are off they tend to stay off.

Last Saturday my wife had a luncheon for a few women she works with. I was going to try out the rifle I got for Christmas, but it was too cold so I did what any red-blooded American male would do when confronted with a house full of women, I stayed at my workbench in the basement working on my model trains. So anyway, off came the sheets from the funiture, so the cats stayed off. Then my wife put a tablecloth on the dining-room table, a nice dark brownish-red one, at which point Snoball (guess what color she is!) realized that the table was covered so it must be OK for her to go up there. My wife described her as lounging in the middle of the table. Since none of the cats generally go up on the table, we decided she must have thought it was OK because there was a cover on it.

It's hard to be too upset when they're following the rules as they understand them.

Science and Faith - Part 1

For those of you who don’t know me well (which is about two-thirds of my regular readers, the other third being my wife) I’m a Christian. I’m also quite well versed in the “hard” sciences (physics, astronomy, geology, some biology, and a little chemistry). Some people find it hard to rationalize faith with science. I believe this inability is a direct result of a misunderstanding of science.

Science deals exclusively with what can be consistently measured in the universe. If it can’t be seen and measured it doesn’t belong in the realm of science. If someone else, following the same procedure as I do, can’t get the same results as I did it’s not science.

Modern people don’t understand how radical the scientific method was when it was first proposed. I’ve read that at one time mathematicians were debating at length over whether the weight of an object had any effect on how fast it would fall under gravity. Some argued that the acceleration of gravity was independent of mass, some argued that a heavier object would fall faster. Then a man by the name of Galileo did something that was so completely unheard of that the mathematicians must have gaped in wonder, he actually took two iron balls, one considerably heavier than the other, to the top of the Tower of Pisa, and dropped them to see what would happen. I’ve personally seen similar tests done in Physics classrooms, and the results were always the same as what Galileo got, the two objects hit the ground at the same time. (Interestingly, one of the astronauts who landed on the moon brought a hammer and a feather with him and dropped them. In the absense of air the hammer and feather hit the ground at the same time too.)

Let’s set up a simple experiment to use as an example. Let’s say I am going to take a marble and drop it from the roof of my house and measure how long it takes to hit the ground. So I need a marble, and a stop watch and my house. I can use a tape measure to determine how high the marble will be when I drop it, and I can calculate how long it should take to hit the ground. I can then use a stop-watch to measure how long it actually does take. I ignore anything that doesn’t affect the outcome of the experiment, I don’t care what color the marble is or what day of the week it is. So I climb up on the roof, drop my marble, and a seagull swoops down, grabs the marble in mid-air, and carries it away. He drops the marble ten minutes later, at which point it hits the ground. Do I claim that it took the marble ten minutes to hit the ground? I do not, because the seagull wasn’t part of the experiment.

Pay attention now, this is important. If I perform this experiment a hundred times, or a thousand, or a million, and hundreds of other people perform exactly the same experiment thousands or millions more times, and in no case does a seagull swoop down and grab the marble, does that disprove the existence of seagulls? It does not, for exactly the same reason, seagulls aren’t part of what we’re measuring.

Science, by definition, is repeatable, it deals with the general case. Science can say that, given a set of conditions (for instance height from which the marble is dropped) we expect a certain set of results (time to hit the ground). If something else comes into the system (like a seagull) the results are unusable.

So, the science of medicine can tell us that if a person has a particular disease he or she will probably die within a certain amount of time. Medicine can tell us that there is no known cure for such a disease. Then God can swoop in and perform a miracle and heal the person. This doesn’t discount the value of medical science, nor do people who are not healed miraculously disprove the existence of God. God exists outside of our universe, He is unpredictable (God works in mysterious ways) so His actions cannot be accounted for in science.

This is part one of this topic, where I’m trying to lay some groundwork. In part two I intend to deal with some issues where faith and science collide and hopefully make some sense of the issues. If you have any such issues you'd like to see discussed let me know in the comments.

Random Snowy Thoughts

The area I live in (Bergen County, NJ) got nailed by a good old fashioned Nor'Easter over the weekend that dumped a couple feet of snow on us. Nearby NYC recorded the largest single-storm snowfall ever recorded, almost 29 inches (although I was sure there was one ten or so years ago that topped 30 inches). I spent a good part of my day yesterday moving snow around, shovelling out the cars, clearing the sidewalks (and since I live on a corner I have twice as much sidewalk as my neighbors), and raking snow off part of the roof that's got a mild pitch so it tends to form ice dams. Advil is my friend today.

Since this is a rant outlet for me: The town Department of Public Works (DPW) is responsible for plowing, salting, sanding, etc. Since I live on a small side-street I don't expect to get plowed early. We finally got a plow Sunday afternoon, and only then did I go out and finish clearing the driveway. An hour or so later DPW sent another plow that actually left the road looking worse than it did before, and of course plugged up my driveway again. I did get a little lucky though, on the side of my house the plows often run right along the curb and throw the snow up onto my sidewalk.

The snow in NYC where I work is the usual post-snowstorm color, a brownish grey sludge. Anyone who describes someone as "pure as the driven snow" has never seen snow that's been driven over.

I've noticed that the ability of an individual to drive in snow decreased with the size of their SUV. Hint: Four-wheel-drive won't help your two-ton monster stop, so please don't drive 75 mph when the road is snow covered. Someone I care about may be in the car you ram into.

Whenever we have a snowfall like this I wonder if it would be a good idea to buy a snow-blower. The only problem is that I'm terminally cheap, and snow blowers in the price range I'd be willing to pay only handle up to eight or ten inches of snow. Honestly, I can generally handle that much snow with my shovel. I can't see spending $1,000 or so on something I'll probably only really need every two or three years.

I'm fairly handy, mechanically. I used to work with a guy who was, to say the least, not mechanically inclined. He decided to buy a snow-blower, so he sought my advice. The blower he bought had an electric starter, you'd plug it in, start it, then unplug it and go blow snow. He didn't understand why it also had a pull rope, until I explained that if it stalled at the far end of your property it was probably easier to pull the rope to restart a hot engine than to walk it all the way back to the electrical outlet. He also asked me about the chute on top that directs the snow, asking which way he should point it. I told him that depended on where he wanted the snow to go, left or right. He asked if he could point it straight back, to which I replied "(Name withheld to protect the dopey) you'll be standing there!"

Well, it's supposed to turn warm later in the week. I'm glad we got the basement waterproofed last year, since normally this much snow melting would give us a nice pond in the basement. I'm working on a couple entries that are just about ready.

I've Been Tagged

MorningGlory tagged me with this, and since she's one of my faithful readers I'll do my best:

4 Jobs I Have Held In My Life: College Assistant; Night Adjunct Computer Lab Technician; Computer Programmer; Consultant

4 Places I Have Lived: Mariner's Harbor, Staten Island, NY; West Brighton, Staten Island, NY; Clifton, NJ, River Edge, NJ. Given that I've had a total of five addresses in my entire life, this wasn't easy.

4 TV Shows I Love To Watch: Mail Call; Mythbusters; any NY Jets game; I used to love Junkyard Wars but it doesn't seem to be on anymore

4 Websites I Visit Daily: http://www.boortz.com ; http://www.theothersideofkim.com ; http:// www.railroad-line.com ; http://www.thehighroad.com

4 Favorite Foods: My wife's meatloaf ; steak ; grilled porkchops ; anything chocolate

4 Places I Would Rather Be Right Now: Home; Aruba; Dominica; Norweigian Dawn

4 People I am tagging: Honestly, any blogger I read regularly either already got tagged or wouldn't respond, so I'll just have to pass on this. One of the downsides of being among the last people to get tagged.

Men Without Chests

“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful.” C.S. Lewis

The above quote is from one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis. Even though he wrote those words over 50 years ago in England they still ring true for 21st Century America, perhaps now more than ever.

Let me offer an example, one taken from popular culture, on the TV show "Survivor". I seldom watch this show, but once in a while I’ll catch part of it. One thing that strikes me about it is that a person can make a promise to someone, shake hands on it, swear to God, or swear on their mother’s grave, or swear on anything you care to name, then go back on their word. Their excuse is always “I’m playing the game”, and the other surviving participants nod approvingly. How in the name of God did we ever reach a point where someone would give their word, on national TV, then immediately and intentionally break that word, also on national TV, and not become a social outcast? There was a time when someone who did such a thing would have been voted off the island at the very next tribal council and would have been a pariah when they returned home. As the young ape in the original Planet of the Apes movie asked, “What ever happened to honor?”

We’ve raised a generation of men who’ve been told that it’s entirely up to the woman whether she wants to bear a child, but if she does he’s totally financially responsible for that child for the next eighteen years. We wonder why there are so many men who consider their parental responsibilities to begin and end with mailing a child-support check. We’ve raised a generation of people who denigrate strength and heroism as “macho BS” then wonder why, when an emergency happens, there’s no one to hide behind. We’ve raised a generation of people who consider honor to be quaint, old fashioned, and out of vogue and wonder why we now have a generation of people who will lie, cheat and steal in order to get what they want. We’ve raised a generation of people who are told that their own self-esteem is the most important thing in the world and wonder why people are so selfish. We make light of marital vows and wonder why so many marriages end in divorce.

Perhaps I’m the dinosaur I’ve been accused of being. I believe that there’s a way to act toward others and most definitely a way not to act. To my immense shame I don’t always live up to that standard, but when I don’t the problem is with me, not with the standard. “If at first you don’t succeed, lower your standards” is the slogan of a person who will never accomplish anything, and it’s the slogan of a nation that’s in a downward spiral.

I try not to write these entries that identify a problem without offering a solution. In this case I'll start my solution with a reference to two more popular culture icons, two people who rank high on my list of annoying people but who, in this case, are dead right in what they say. These two people are Oprah and Dr Phil, they say these two things repeatedly, I don't know who said either first and I also don't really care. They say that (1) you teach people how to treat you and (2) when someone shows you what kind of person they are, believe them. If someone makes a promise to you and breaks it and their excuse amounts to "I wanted to" don't give them the chance to do it again. If a company does business with you dishonestly and says "That's just the way the business is" don't do any further business with them and insist that everyone you know avoid them. When your elected officials promise you something and do the exact opposite once their elected don't vote for them next time. People lie to us and cheat us because we've taught them that they can with impunity. It's about time to stop that. As always the solution begins with the individual. If I can quote one more cultural icon, John Wayne in "The Shootist" said "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I expect the same from them." One could do worse than to live one's life by this standard.

Truce

Yesterday's media event was a new tape made by Osama Bin Laden and aired by Al-Jazeera (All Terrorism, All The Time). The voice on the tape apparently is that of Bin Laden, and in it he referred to the July 7 bombings in London. This surprised me since I thought he'd been turned into a pinkish mist a year or more ago and the only reason it hadn't been reported was that the Daisy Cutter bomb didn't leave enough to identify.

The big news here is twofold, one, he's promising more attacks and two, he's offering a truce. The first should come as no surprise, we know Al Qaeda wants to attack us, inflict more damage on us and kill more of our people. Honestly, there's nothing to see there.

The offer of a truce is interesting though. Since 9/11 he's been threatening to destroy the US, he's been saying that American troops would be running in disarray, driven by terrorists with the full support of God. He promised blood running in the streets and his followers climbing over the piled bodies of our soldiers to get at the survivors. Now he's offering a "truce", and I have have to wonder why.

Your average American is a fundamentally decent person. He or she doesn't want to spill other people's blood but they also know that sometimes people force you to choose between either hurting them or being hurt yourself. We also tend to be naive, we tend to think other people are also basically decent people, so our first impression may be to look at Bin Laden's offer of a truce as a means of preventing bloodshed on both sides. We may think he's decided he made his point, now let's all take our weapons, go home, and live in peace.

Such a policy would, I believe, be a disaster. Bin Laden is the same man who ordered the 9/11 attacks. In case you forgot, a group of young men armed with box cutters took over four jets and crashed them in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania killing a total of three thousand people who did nothing more than go to work that day or try to fly from one place to another. If these attacks don't show a complete and utter disregard for human life, ours or theirs, I don't know what does. If the terrorists really were winning (as he claims), he wouldn't be offering a truce, he'd be planning our total destruction.

I can think of only one reason for his offer, and that's that he knows that if we keep going as we are his terrorist organization will lose, utterly and completely. In the last four years we've killed or captured thousands of Al Qaeda terrorists, including many high up in their command structure. If we accept their truce we give them the time and opportunity to rebuild.

Another thing about Americans, we tend to take a short view. We decide to do something and we try to get it done next week. The longest-term goal I can recall was JFKs promise to land on the moon within a decade, for us ten years is long-range planning. The terrorists don't think that way, they have no problem waiting ten or twenty years for us to get complacent and for them to rebuild before they attack again. They WILL attack again, truce or no truce. Only one thing will prevent that, and that's eliminating terrorists. We've been doing a darn good job of that for the last four years.

So over the next days and weeks, when you hear people talking about a truce with the terrorists, you'll hear about how it'll prevent bloodshed. Ask how we'll verify that Al Qaeda is keeping that truce. After all, in a truce between two sides of a war each side makes sure the other knows they're keeping the truce and aren't just using it as a cover for preparing for a new attack. Do they plan to just take Osama's word for it? Do they trust him that much?

Yes, we're decent, and we can be naive. We don't have to be foolish, and I believe any talk of truce, any talk of any end to the War on Terror that doesn't end in total defeat of the terrorists is a mistake. Just as in World War II when the US would accept nothing but unconditional surrender from Japan, we can't afford to let this end until our mission is accomplished. That will happen when we say it will and not before.

Philosophy

When I was in college I took three Philosophy courses, all taught by the same instructor. She was a dedicated Atheist, Communist, and Existentialist. I thought her insights into the Human Condition were just amazing. I thought the books she had us read were incredibly thought provoking (although I never completely accepted the Communist Manifesto as being the best way to handle economics). Now, twenty years later, I can see all this for what it was, namely baloney.

This is what happens in a college environment. You have a group of young people, with essentially no real-world experience. You add a group of older people with titles, letters after their names, and most importantly tenure. This second group generally has little more real-world experience than the first, but they've had the time to read a lot more. Group two then proceeds to fill group one's heads with all sorts of wonderful-sounding stuff, and group one lacks the discernment derived from experience to recognize the fallacy of what they're learning. The students lack the experience to question the underlying premises they're being fed, once those premises are accepted they'll fall for the rest of the philosophy. Anyone who's studied logic can tell you that if you start off with an incorrect premise you can prove anything at all.

This system is self-perpetuating. I was a Computer Science major, my goal was a job out in the real world. Had I been a Philosophy major (and I seriously considered a double major) my goal would probably have been a college teaching position. I would have simply moved up the Ivory Tower, from student to teacher, and helped to fill the next generation of young, inexperienced brains with nonsense. A percentage of them would also have become Philosophy teachers, and so on and so on and so on.

Don't get me wrong, we need Philosophy teachers. We don't want to raise generations of worker drones who know how to do their jobs and nothing else. I do, however, think Philosophy departments in general would be better off if the teachers had to apply their philosophies in the real-world day after day.

I had basically three classifications of teachers in my major and closely related subjects like Engineering. First, and decidedly in the minority, were those who had been teachers since they got out of school themselves. Second were people who studied their fields in school, then worked in the field for some time before semi-retiring to a full-time teaching position. Third were people who were currently employed full-time in their fields and were teaching part-time. Those last two categories were about equal in number. What this meant was that the majority of my teachers in my major had real-world experience. They knew what it meant to work late to find and correct a program problem. They knew what it was to have the phone ring at 2:00 AM because your program just bombed. They knew that all the wonderful theories in the world meant nothing until the program was thoroughly tested and debugged. They knew that if it hadn't been tested by definition it didn't work.

Communism, for instance, is a wonderful philosophy on paper. Everyone treated equally, everyone working for the common good. As Bill Whittle said though, it requires you to believe that the entire commune will turn out at midnight to search for the cow that no one owns when she gets lost in a snow storm. If you've never had to search for a cow in a snowstorm you might well believe such a thing, once you have you'll know better.

My Philosophy teacher often criticized my essays and papers for being too logical. I took as critical a look at the philosophy in question as my limited experience allowed. Looking back, it wasn't sufficiently critical, but you can't expect old heads on young shoulders. The majority of my course work was in a field where a misplaced comma could mean a long night of debugging, where hooking the circuit up to the 12 volt instead of the 5 volt power source could ruin your day, and where Murphy's law was always strictly enforced. Where the question was not whether something would break, but when and where it would break and how much damage it would do when it fell.

So I look around the laboratory that is our world. Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing and expecting different results, well I see a great many people holding on to failed beliefs and expecting them to work this time. Communism, Moral Relativism, Collectivism, Multiculturalism. They've all been tried and have failed, in some cases multiple times. If you make a wrong turn it's not "progress" to keep going in the wrong direction, you only make progress by going back to the last place where you were right.

Anything else is insanity.