Here's a great article from Human Events.

Lessons from Boston and Chechnya

Can freedom last forever?

"In all of history’s great civilizations, there has come the moment when their citizens became their own worst enemies, thinking and living at odds with the values and principles upon which their nation was built. Political analyst and social critic Os Guinness provides both historical and current evidence that suggests America is perilously close to reaching this point today. But with this alert, Guinness also offers direction and encouragement for those seeking to achieve what the country’s founding fathers predicted would be most challenging: sustainable freedom." This quote is from Os Guinness' website promoting his new book, A Free People's Suicide. We don't have to commit suicide. There is hope! But we're pushing closer and closer.

The link below will take you to a video recording of Os Guinness' speech for the Socrates in the City series:

Os Guinness speaks at "Socrates in the City" on the topic of American liberty...

Os Guinness' web site

Trust in God or Trust in Man

Western Civilization? Eh, Burn it Down!

People who think they're smart and sound off about things they don't understand usually end up looking like donkeys. Unfortunately, these days when the donkeys sit in positions of authority or have control of the noise making devices that are broadcast in the popular culture, they seem to have quite a following of devotees who listen and come to agree with them. I have no idea how many people, young or middle age or old, actually do agree with them, but they certainly make a lot of noise! Every time I think, 'Surely this will be the last straw,' the power elites manage to pile on another ton. One begins to wonder whether anyone will realize why everything has finally, totally gone to hell when it does finally go totally to hell.

Blame George W. Bush!

The longer things go the more frightening the future looks. Imagine western civilization is a 22-story building built on centuries of God working to shape human beings into better creatures.

Western civilization has achieved a series of great high points through the years besides art and music. How about the invention of capitalism; the invention of the scientific method; religious and political freedom; the end of slavery (in the western world); rights for women and the rule of law, by the people and for the people, as opposed to the rule of the guy who manages to kill off enough of the competition that he can command his thugs to control the rest.

Now we have a passel of entertainment and education elites joining forces with liberal politicians who despise the very culture that has made it possible for them to exist. This group has been busy setting fire to the pillars upon which the culture stands--one after the other--since the 1960's. Among other things, they teach:

Capitalism is evil. Nobody should be allowed to make money running a business, the business exists to provide money and benefits for its workers. Now, sports figures and entertainment celebrities and politicians, they should be allowed to make all the money they possibly can.

Science is good, especially now that we can use it to show how God didn't create everything and is irrelevant.

Persons of the same gender should, not only be able to have sex with each other, but they should be able to get "married" without giving any thought to what marriage actually is or if it will work well for the mental health and stability of the children they'll be raising. Kind of like the great results we've been getting with single mothers raising children.

The common man (especially if he's a Conservative or Christian or a farmer or a rancher or a business owner) is an idiot. Wouldn't it be nice if we had only one political party and our leader could be a dictator?

Slavery is good. No, wait! Don't call it that. Call it "benefits" or "entitlements" or other euphemistic phrases. Slavery is good because these poor fools can't get into university by their own merit on their own cash; they can't get a job and feed their kids themselves and you certainly don't expect them to amount to anything, do you? Besides, if we give them free stuff they give us more power by voting for us.

Fine teaching, isn't it? Great progress teeters on a burning foundation while the fire-starters mock those of us who want to put out the fire and repair the damage.

It's sad how so few people are asking, "If X was thought to be the right way to do something for centuries, shouldn't we kind of step back and think about this before we blow it up?"

Jim Carrey, who has made a living acting like a donkey in most of his movies, decided to do a parody on a TV show made by and for a group of people who traditionally have been humble enough to poke fun at themselves (which is why the TV show Hee Haw ever existed in the first place). In this parody, Carrey browbeat a great actor who is dead and can't defend himself while mocking cowboys, farmers, rednecks and anybody else who thinks the 2nd Amendment is about ordinary citizens having the ability to take down an out of control government. He uses actors pretending to be pillars of western civilization to help him set his fire and together they laugh derisively at the hapless object of his hatred. It's mean spirited; bigoted and not funny, but it's Jim Carrey and that makes it ok. Doesn't it?

Cold Dead Hand with Jim Carrey

Greg Gutfeld Destroys Anti-Gun Jim Carrey in Epic Rant
 

Eric Metaxas speech at the 2013 CPAC Conference

 Eric Metaxas, author of a handful of children's books, two biographies one on William Wilberforce and one on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, former Veggie Tales writer and writer for Chuck Colson, seems to be on a one man crusade to wake American Christians from their slumber. He's not the only person sounding the alarm. Ben Carson is also. Dear reader, look for their speeches on the web and watch them.

This blog is devoted to the very principles Eric Metaxas addresses in his speech before CPAC. That is, freedom of religion that doesn't impact our every day lives, how we conduct our business affairs and our political views isn't much of a freedom and isn't much of a religion either. As Metaxas points out in his speech, China has freedom of religion! There the concept is keep that religion stuff inside the four walls of the building or in your prayer closet, once you enter the outside world you come under the auspices of the State and it is your god--obey or be punished. This brings home his idea, which he attributes to Os Guinness, that without freedom of religion you don't have freedom.

Those of us who do not have the sorts of platforms where men like Eric Metaxas and Ben Carson speak may think that we can't do much, but that doesn't mean our efforts don't matter. Think on these things, share them with your friends, have debates and discussions--get people thinking, wake up your neighbors! Our nation is a nation governed by "we the people" let's take it back from "we the elite."

Eric Metaxas discusses how religious freedom is threatened in today's culture.

A reasoned and well researched defense of gun rights

Here's a video of a girl who competes in shooting competitions. Here's her analysis of gun control.

Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs

Bishop E.W. Jackson: Exodus Now! Blacks, Christians, Godly Must Leave Democrat Party

Pay for My Contraception or Else!

In case you can't read the lettering on the cartoon image at left, here it is:

"If you don't want women to get abortions, don't oppose coverage for contraceptives that would keep them from getting pregnant."

In other words, nobody should have to pay for their own contraception. And if any girl or woman gets pregnant and doesn't want to be, it's your responsibility. (Funny how these same people who want free contraception don't want anybody regulating their bedroom activities!)

The old-fashioned "wait until you're married" rule for having sex (which at least most girls used to enforce) is so passe now, in fact, it's so passe that it's cause for mockery and off-color joking directed at anybody stupid enough to utter the thought. If a celebrity, heaven forbid, is foolish enough to make such a promise out loud, the press waits to see if he or she can keep that promise and if he or she doesn't, you can bet the snide remarks will escalate. Further more, there's not a smidgen of slack given to a celebrity who pledged virginity until marriage if that celebrity ends up divorced. BAM! Get a divorce and the mockery doubles should that person dare to date again.

Among the noise makers who occupy many of the voice boxes of our nation, the concept of virginity has lost its classification as "noble and good" along with heroism, patriotism and other virtues adults used to promote in their youth. Their ideas about what is "noble and good" include gay marriage, rights for Islamics, "green" technology and doling out other people's money to help the poor. Does anybody ask why virginity and heroism and patriotism were considered "ideals" for centuries and why they were promoted? Nope. Us moderns is smarter than you passe folks. (Most teenagers are smarter than their parents, after all, they were born more recently.)

In practical terms the basic attitude seems to be: the sex drive is so overwhelming that nobody can control themselves, so why bother? It's normal. Rutting is normal. So, go forth and rut. (Am I using hyperbole?)

If evolution is true, then rather than moving forward (after centuries of promoting virginity and the other passe virtues which our predecessors thought were "noble and good") toward a population of more advanced beings, we've slipped back into a more animal-like state where hormones take over and a male or a female lose control when the sex drive flares up. Give me contraception now! I've got to do it right now! And I don't want to do any yard work to pay for it!

Anybody who's ever owned a pet knows that when the animal goes in heat, there's no stopping that burning urge to make or get pregnant! The animal roams about howling, seemingly in pain, until a beast of the opposite sex in the same species arrives and then let the coitus begin! Don't care where and don't care who's watching! Male animals in the wild go berserk and practically kill each other fighting to collect and retain the most females. Human males are encouraged to adopt a lower version of that model, just rut and move on. More like how insects do it--except women don't often kill their sexual partners.

The pill didn't clarify anything or free anybody. Since we have contraception and that present day "last ditch" alternative, abortion, the whole business is ten times more muddled than it's ever been before in history. The sixties idea that, "The pill is great! Now we can have all the sex we want with no consequences," has turned out to be worse than a pipe dream, it's turned into a nightmare. Generations of kids whose progenitors thought they could fool around without having to take responsibility for their actions now darken the doors of public schools. Some don't know who their sperm donors were and might be on their fourth or fifth male in the house sleeping with their mother. Many are ignored and ill-fed, barely able to interact with other human beings because they've had so little socializing with Mom and Dad, some of them are hardly able to speak beyond the most infantile utterances! Young males growing up without fathers roam the streets beating each other up and killing one another in drive-by shootings or trapping each other in drugs and crime because there's no mature male to show them what it means to be a man. What a great society all this "free" sex has wrought! Give them welfare!

Of this group, the lucky ones that sprang from the loins of parents who bought into the "free sex" lie are those whose progenitors recognized the folly of their ways and tried to do better. Of this group, the more highly evolved try to make a marriage and raise their kids. Other offspring of this newly enlightened group are farmed out to be raised by mature grandparents, some are lucky enough to have both genders of grandparents living with them. But far too many of these children conceived by a male who wanted to have sex and a female who believes she's supposed to let him have ended up dead before they could even take their first breaths!

Sex is way more important than almost anything!

But, let's face it: once conception occurs, the only difference between the initial ball of cells and a baby is time and the proper conditions! Everything that will make that mass of cells into a baby is there at the moment of conception.

We're talking about a human being.

A human being who was invited into the universe, not an invasion force to be repelled at all costs!

Despite all the years and years of sex ed with the bananas and the condoms and the graphics provided by Planned Parenthood, somehow or other many people of all ages don't seem to recognize that the sex act is an invitation to a potential human being to come join us here on planet earth. It's not about the boy "getting off" and the girl feeling loved--it's about making babies. The pleasure part is just the anesthesia to bond parents to each other and lull them into happy mode before the baby is born and keeps them up all night for months, years on end.

Back-alley abortions used to be the dread of females who made a stupid mistake, or who were trapped in abusive relationships, or forced into sexual relations. Abortion rights advocates used the gruesome portrait of the victimized pregnant woman suffering a coat-hanger abortion as their clarion call for legalizing the barbarous act.

Fine, legal abortion is better than back alley coat hangers, but the abortion promoters didn't stop there! Abortion has become a millions-of-dollars profit industry in the United States, subsidized by tax dollars, with lobbyists in Washington who work to make sure the abortion industry remains legal and lucrative.

Arrive at a Planned Parenthood clinic and not only will the employees dispense contraception, but if a woman thinks she's pregnant, they will administer a pregnancy test and help her get an abortion. Adoption is not on their list of services. (Neither are mammograms though Planned Parenthood labels itself a "health" provider.) And they don't want anybody lurking around outside suggesting to their customers that adoption might be a viable alternative nor do they want any states making laws that require the woman see an ultrasound of the mass of tissue they're about to murder before they go through with the deed. It would interfere with their profits.

These days, abortion is promoted about as much as contraception and both are pushed almost as much as rutting!

Abortion advocates wailed about the evils of back-alley abortion clinics, but women going into abortion clinics today aren't treated much better than they were in those bad old days. Recently, a woman in Chicago died after a botched, second trimester abortion performed in a Planned Parenthood clinic. Here's a link discussing it: Woman dies after botched abortion. or if this link is a dud, google "botched abortion," an article about one is certain to turn up. While you're at it, google "second trimester abortion" and click on the "image" link. A page full of those photos should make your heart ache and cause you to lose your dinner. If it doesn't you're well on to your way to becoming one of the walking dead like the living heart donors who do this kind of thing for a living.

Why, if the woman was going to get an abortion anyway, would she wait until the second trimester boggles the mind.

But the point is, having legal abortion clinics doesn't necessarily result in fewer deaths for women or less grief and agony for women.

Planned Parenthood has no love for these women seeking abortion, why should they? The "mother" wants to kill someone and they're more than happy to be paid to do the deed. The woman walking in is just an opportunity for profit. The respect level by default is going to be pretty dang low.

It doesn't matter what rationalizations are trotted out. Nobody willing to commit murder will have respect for someone who wants to have the murder done, unless that someone has the power to kill the hired murderer themselves. There's no respect in the "dog-eat-dog" world of killing other human beings except for the biggest, meanest dog and that only as long as he's the top killer.

People today argue that rutting is just human nature, well, so is lack of respect for someone willing to hire someone to kill--especially who kills by extracting a human life from inside another person's body. The one paying for the extracting didn't have respect for life to start with, why should the extractor have respect for either the life of the being who will be extracted or the one from whose body he or she is removed?

Which leads us back to the beginning: a culture that casts off old mores without understanding why generation after generation promoted those mores will create for themselves and their progeny a disastrous mess. Disastrous mess, here we come!    
    

Marilyn                           

Isn't It Ironic?

Oil Company subsidies/deductions

President Obama recently proposed eliminating certain subsidies for the oil industry with the claim that as they are making billions in profits they do not need subsidies from the government.  The industry countered that they were legitimate deductions recognizing real, if difficult to explain, needed expenses.  Congress blocked the whole thing, but what were the real issues? 

The question of whether a particular deduction is a legitimate expense or a government subsidy is frequently a matter of opinion. 

Profitability is another question.  Profitability is determined by percentage Return On Investment (ROI).  It does not matter if the return is in billions of dollars or is mere pennies.  A profit of ten cents on an investment of one dollar is an ROI of 10% and a profit of one billion on an investment of one hundred billion is a ROI of 1%. the one dollar investment is ten times as profitable.  ROI is a signal to the market that more or less investment is needed in that particular area.  Investment, and therefore, activity and research will move away from low ROI and toward high ROI.

Except (yes, in economics there is always an except) for the factor of risk.  High risk activities require a high ROI.  Low risk activities require a lower ROI.  Since WWII, the oil and gas industry has been a relatively low risk business in the aggregate (which is the primary concern of large multinationals) and a high risk business in specific locals (which affects small independents more).

The subsidies/deductions were put in place at a time when the fledgling industry needed encouragement  and the Government saw a need for more oil.  Whether they are still needed today is a technical question that depends primarily on what is desired for the future of the industry.  There are some good arguments both for keeping and for phasing them out.  (NOTE: Phasing them out is not the same as simply ending them as was proposed by the Obama administration.)

So what happens if they are phased out or ended?  Over the long run eliminating these subsidies/deductions will mean a higher effective tax rate on the industry which is a rise in cost and will result in higher prices for all oil products.  The existence of these breaks is built into the current price and a change must cause a response.  If such an elimination is phased in over several years, with some reasonable warning, the change would simply be absorbed and adjusted for with appropriately higher prices on all oil and gas based products. (Which means pretty much everything else will rise in price also.)   

If these deductions are suddenly ended it has other effects.  In addition to the above it would also produce some important short term results.  One would be a small increase in Federal revenues.  A second would be a (probably large) decrease in domestic drilling.  This would happen because if a sudden change in profitability occurs it would force businesses to reexamine current plans before going forward.  If the government chooses to inflict a sudden change on businesses, the costs of risk have to be recalculated.  The most important things businesses need are stability and predictability.  If rules that have been in place for a century can be suddenly obliterated without even an opportunity to adjust, then the whole issue of risk must be reconsidered. In climates of unpredictable change, the cost of risk would need to increase, thus Oil Company profits would probably also increase over the long run as a higher ROI was demanded by risk averse investors.

The environmental lobby has made it very clear that they believe the cost of energy should rise.  This is a consistent position they have held for more than 30 years.  They have reasons.  I disagree with those reasons, but that discussion is for a different post.  The Obama administration has consistently supported the environmentalist position.  I respect that position even though I disagree with it. The proposed action of removing subsidies/deductions in the oil industry is entirely consistent with an effort to increase energy costs specifically in the area of fossil fuels.

What I do not respect is the effort to hide the fact that this action would increase energy costs and the fact that such an increase is specifically the reason for the proposal (plus the usual political jockeying).  One of the primary things holding down the economy is uncertainty over potential future governmental regulations. (As I stated earlier, business needs stability and predictability.)  Such sudden and dramatic changes in major rules are a threat to an economy that is already near frozen with fear of what the government will do next.

If this post causes you to have even more questions, good.  Maybe you need to ask more questions.

Dan

Arrogance and Vanity in the Human Scientist

There's plenty of arrogance and vanity in the ordinary human being, but scientists often seem worse. This is probably due to that fact that they're generally well educated, are actually pretty smart and have lots of training--things which often tend to make people assume they're qualified to make bold declarations the rest of us should listen to and obey or adopt.

Examples of these sorts of public assertions are quite numerous. Don't eat eggs: they cause high cholesterol. A few years later: eggs are good. Or don't eat butter; it's bad for your heart, eat margarine instead. A few years later: margarine is bad, very bad, so bad we must ban it from restaurants in New York! Butter is good. Eat butter.

Recently the entire paradigm of the dinosaur world had to be reworked because someone realized that fossils previously thought to be separate species are actually babies or juveniles. You'd think that would be pretty obvious. Duh, not every fossil is a grown-up, how can it be?

Or how about the old assertion that RNA was junk genetic material that didn't really do much which lately has been found bogus. Actually, RNA does a heck of a lot and is vital.

One of my all time favorite expert opinions: humans only use 10% of their brains. That one was recently overturned when it was realized that most of the brain is busy, very busy, doing stuff the consciousness is unaware of. Ok, I don't know about you, but you'd think that should be pretty obvious too.

Isn't there a paradigm, easily proven, about how the body is very efficient and doesn't keep any useless things around--like muscle? If you're a couch potato, you lose muscle or if you're an astronaut, you lose bone. It's been proven. You can prove it. Just lie around on the couch for a few weeks. So, that leads me to ask, why would we have so much junk genetic material and so many brain cells if they're all doing nothing? Funny, scientists weren't asking that question, but instead thought themselves quite smart and mouthed off their ideas in an arrogant, know-it-all, vain sort of way. Only to be later proved wrong. Thankfully, eventually discovering something once thought correct is actually wrong is the beauty of the "scientific method" which early scientists, most of whom were Christians, invented.

John W. Moffat in his book Reinventing Gravity (how human beings can "reinvent" gravity, I haven't discovered yet) asserts:

The Greek mind was abstract, fond of ideals and patterns, and slipped easily into Christianity's Earth- and human-centered theology. It took many centuries for thinkers such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton to break with the enmeshed Platonic and Christian views of the universe, to turn astronomy and physics into sciences, and to develop the idea of gravity.

The implication here, though not explicitly stated, is that these guys he listed were somehow superior to Christians--that they weren't really Christians. Maybe he thinks they only pretended to be so they could get along in society. Actually, they were all Christians. They didn't break from their Christianity, they broke from the Greek model of thought. And, it was their Christianity that encouraged them and enabled their liberation.

Galileo wrote:

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

Christianity is not the stumbling block many present day scientists think it is. A person who truly follows Christ will receive revelation, as Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo did, because to follow Christ is to hunger for truth and God doesn't withhold truth from the honest seeker.

Just because a person doesn't fit in with the dogma of his day doesn't make him a sure-enough heretic or unscientific.

How one interprets what the Bible says can be a stumbling block, as Galileo discovered, and Copernicus knew--which is why Copernicus didn't allow any of his stuff to be published until he'd died. Certainly there are Christians who, like the church fathers of Copernicus' and Galileo's day, are stuck in an erroneous paradigm. Unbelieving scientists aren't immune, as much as they'd like to think they are.

It behooves each mortal to listen to and weigh what the opposition has to say and then check one's tendencies toward arrogant vanity. It's all too easy to be exposed as a fool in the end.

Marilyn

Lava fields in Northern New Mexico from Capulin Mountain

Noam Chomsky is onto something

The November 2011 issue of Discover magazine features an interview with libertarian socialist, anarcho-syndicalist and radical linguist, Noam Chomsky.

On page 71 the interviewer says that parents marvel at how their children develop language. "It seems incredible that we know so little about the process." In response, Chomsky talks about how the new born baby "has some information about its mother's language. It can distinguish its mother's language from some other language when both are spoken by a bilingual woman." He then mentions William James calling what an infant experiences as "blooming, buzzing confusion." He said, "Somehow the infant reflexively selects out of that complex environment the data that are language-related. No other organism can do this: a chimpanzee can't do that." He wonders, "How did these things evolve?"

If I didn't know any more about Chomsky than what I've read in this article, his question "How did these things evolve?" lets me in on his foundational paradigm: he believes in Darwinism or a modified version of Darwinism.

How did language evolve? Good question. Don't see a whole lot of value for literature when a person is trying to get away from a tiger or live through a drought. It just doesn't seem to me that nature really gives a fig about literature. And to think that infants already have this amazing ability to perceive language out of all the cacophony that surrounds them. Couldn't have anything to do with what the "fetus" heard in the womb of any sort of special relationship between the mother and the infant, at least from the infant's point of view, before birth, could it?

The God of the Bible is a God of words which He uses to create things, to speak into being the universe and all the laws that govern it. He also spoke animals into being and when He spoke them, included how their organic parts would fit together and work in concert. When He created human beings, He formed the man's body from dirt and then breathed into him the "breath of life," or to put it another way, He breathed into the man the very thing that made him different from all the other living creatures: language, art, music, self-consciousness, etc., all powered by an eternal spirit. He was created in the Image of God.

From this view, language is inherent in humans. It did not evolve, it was included in the package when humans were created. It's part of the Image of God.

The phrase, "...no other organism can do this..." is very telling. If evolution were true, then there would have to be some kind of evolutionary benefit to language. It would seem that lots of other creatures would have language or be developing it. Like chimpanzees for example, who have complex societies and carry on group behaviors. But, no, they're not evolving language. We can't even make them evolve language despite all the years people have spent trying to teach apes sign language.

Noam Chomsky is onto something and it's right in front of his face, but I don't think he's seeing it.

Marilyn

Science vs. Faith

Scientific American's September 2005 issue reports on a Templeton Foundation conference where the objective was to find common ground between science and religion. Antagonism between science and religion isn't a given; scientific pioneers such as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and Boyle were all devout Christians, yet they laid the foundation for modern science.

According to Scientific American, Biologist Richard Dawkins challenged physicist John Barrow's faith in a debate. Barrow emphasized the fine-tuning of the universe as an indicator of the existence of a Creator Designer.

Dawkins said, "Why not just accept that fine-tuning as a fact of nature? Why do you want to explain it with God?"

Barrow responded dryly, "For the same reason you don't want to."

"Everyone laughed except Dawkins, who protested, "That's not an answer!" Scientific American, pages 24 - 28, article titled: "Clash in Cambridge."

The foundational paradigms of persons involved in the debate are the crux of the antagonism. Barrow sees a Designer's hand at work while Dawkins refuses to. Just as Dawkins resists abandoning his paradigms, so too does Barrow and the opposing parties are at an impasse. Both assert the other party is not being reasonable or logical.

God insists He be accepted by faith. To Barrow, evidence in abundance to prove God's existence is obvious while Dawkins claims he's yet to see any. Martin Rees, author of Just Six Numbers says "the universe is unlikely, very unlikely, deeply, shockingly unlikely," yet he insists no Designer was involved. He believes our universe is only one of an infinite number of other universes, therefore it could still have been created by chance. His theory can't be proven--we can't see past the edge of our universe--he's accepting his theory by faith!

In the end, persons cannot escape the element of faith! No definitive, beyond-a-shadow-of-doubt, without-question proof that God exists and that He created everything will ever be discovered. No definitive, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt, without-question proof God didn't create the universe will ever be discovered either. Whatever a person believes, it will be believed by faith. And that's just the way God wants it.

You May be TIME's Person of the Year, but Big Media is Still in Control

Douglas Rushkoff writes in the March 2007 issue of Discover magazine, (page 70), "I wonder how many people picked up Time's "Person of the Year" issue, gazed into the silver mirror on the cover, and felt genuinely proud to be among the 300-million-or-so people the magazine's editors felt deserved this special honor. After all, we had some stiff competition."

I say, "Yes, how about the American soldier? Eh? But he only counts if he resides in a body bag." I digress.

I wasn't proud. My initial reaction was to hold the magazine delicately with two fingers and gaze about for a trash can. What a cop out! The 300-million-or-so people of the United States "Person of the Year?" Condescending snobbery. If I had any questions about how intelligent the Powers of Media thought I was, I am now no longer in doubt. They're convinced I'm an idiot.

"Welcome to your world," the Time article begins. "For seizing the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game..."

"Welcome to your world?" What? You're sitting in my house and you're welcoming me? Excuse me, where's the barf bag. The only way these clowns can acknowledge ordinary joes like MySpace users, bloggers and YouTube freaks is if they can do it from the safety of their corporate towers in the secure knowledge they still hold the power they deign to assign to us. I'm not fooled, o, ye Corporate Honchos with your six or nine figure salaries and trips to the Bahamas on corporate accounts.

As Rushkoff rightly points out, "Instead of our paying to watch a movie in the theater, we pay to make and upload our own movies online. Instead of paying a record company to listen to their artists' music on a CD player, we pay a computer company for the hardware, an Internet access company for the bandwidth, and a software company for the media players to do all this..."

Yes. It's true. They've come around from behind, while we thought we were empowered and took our money in order to empower us.

Rushkoff says, "Time's willingness to acknowledge the power of Internet users everywhere hints at corporate America's confidence that it has finally weathered the storm: If what's playing on YouTube is the best "the people" can come up with, then media monopolies have nothing to fear."

Does your face sting at such a thought? And we've thought we mattered.

Rushkoff agrees with my first impression of the Time article--gee, the mirror isn't very clear and it seems more like a snub than anything. A snub, a "see--you're not as hot and mighty as you thought, you 300-million-or-so slobs you. We're still "da man!"" It just fits with my general conviction that the media thinks the ordinary joe is basically an idiot.

We, the people, have made some headway, but becoming Time's "Person of the Year," makes it look like it hasn't been much! Like it's all been symbolic! Like we've actually just been wasting our time. Being chosen "Person of the Year" with such confident nose thumbing shows "journalists" (a group of persons the Founding Fathers thought of as the lowest class of humanity), are still in the power seats telling us what they want us to hear and guiding our stupid lowlinesses toward what they feel are correct decisions. Hear, hear. Where's that barf bag?

We are, according to Rushkoff, "...creating content using expensive consumer technologies and uploading it to corporate-owned servers using corporate-owned conduits...we're doing it with software made by corporations whose own interests are embedded in its very code...User agreements...require us to surrender some or all of the rights to our own creations..."

Our behavior is monitored, we're categorized and cubbyholed for advertizing campaigns on sites like this one, iTunes, Second Life, Gmail..."Each and every key stroke becomes part of our consumer profile; every attempt at self-expression is reduced to a brand preference," says Rushkoff. Gak.

Rushkoff concludes, "...But in the end we're still glued to a tube, watching mostly crap, arguing like angry idiots, surrendering the last remains of our privacy, and paying a whole lot more to large corporations for the privilege."

Oh well, here I am blogging away. I'll be looking for a way to get back at you Corporate Honcho.

Wonky PETA Wars

Mary C. Pearl received Senator William Proxmire's "Golden Fleece" award awhile back for applying for funding to research how rhesus monkeys behave in the wild. The "Golden Fleece" is given to the person or group Proxmire believes begs for money to pay for bogus science. Personally, I don't think Pearl's research idea was bogus. Rhesus monkeys were widely used in laboratories and it makes sense to have a base line for how they'd act if they weren't trapped in wire cages in colorless, sterile rooms.

Her recent article in Discover magazine, April 2007, touches on the confusing, hypocritical world of political fighting over animal rights and government funding.

She faults The Center for Consumer Freedom web site for "misleading polemics designed to alarm animal lovers." The site's reference to PETA's killing of "defenseless creatures" is based on PETA's practice of "humane euthanization of unwanted dogs, cats and other pets at a PETA-run animal shelter."

Wait. What's wrong with The Center for Consumer Freedom holding PETA's feet to the fire on this one? If it's ok to kill "unwanted dogs, cats and other pets" living in a PETA-run animal shelter, then why isn't it ok to kill cows for food and mink for fur? I don't get it. What's the difference?

It's a mad, mad world all right.

Morality and Faulty Morality Testing

The May 2007 issue of Discover magazine features an interview with evolutionary biologist, Marc Hauser, beginning on page 62. He uses hypothetical examples of moral dilemmas to discover what persons actually believe regarding moral choices.

The first example in the article is a contrast between these two scenarios:

Scene one: a trolley is running wild down the tracks, a person has to choose between throwing the switch and saving five people but killing one or leaving the trolley alone and killing five people. Should the person pull the switch or let the trolley take its course?

Scene two: a healthy person walks into a hospital where five people are dying of diseases that can be cured with transplants from his body. Do the medical people jump him and take his organs and thereby save five people while killing one or not?

First, in scene one, the person facing the dilemma will most likely do nothing because he'll stand there with his mouth hanging open while his brain tries to process all the issues he's facing. Studies of crisis situations reveal very few people are able to act at all. When a nigh club burned, most of the people remained seated exactly where they had been before the fire started while panic and the inability to process all their issues kept them pinned. The poor fool Hauser has placed in the dilemma will most likely do nothing, therefore proving nothing regarding morality, except that after he finally processes all the information and his issues, he'll probably feel like a worm.

Second, the trolley is an inanimate object, it is not a group of medical personnel in a hospital. It is not contemplating taking the five persons' lives, in fact, it is not contemplating anything at all; it's incapable of contemplation! Medical personnel will not take the life of one healthy person to save five unless that healthy person walks up to the counter and says, "I'm here to donate myself to science." Jumping a healthy person for any reason which will result in his death is called "murder" unless it is a war situation, then it's called "defending your country," and is not considered murder.

These two scenarios have nothing in common to prove anything about morality.

In another example Hauser contrasts these two scenarios:

Scenario 1: A violinist (I have no idea why the violinist part matters, except maybe he thinks there's more moral value to a talented person compared to someone who has no talent) is suffering kidney failure. A woman, sleeping peacefully in her bed wakes up to discover she has been hooked up to this sick violinist. She is told that if he can remained hooked up to her for 9 months, he will recover and his kidneys will be able to function on their own. Will the woman permit this or not?


Scenario 2: A woman wakes up one morning to discover she's pregnant. Will she keep the baby or not?

Hauser crows that even Christians say that the woman linked to the violinist should be permitted to tell him to buzz off and this proves that morality has nothing to do with religion. Duh, I don't get it. Exactly what do these two examples have to do with one another? Didn't someone teach Hauser that sex can and often does lead to conception? Unless the pregnant woman was raped, these two examples have absolutely nothing in common whatsoever. A woman who has consented to have sex with someone should not wake up surprised to discover she's pregnant. FYI: for all you evolutionists, feminists, etc. take note: sex (boy + girl) = baby. It's simple, so simple even a caveman can figure it out.

In the scenario, the woman who was hooked up to the violinist didn't consent to even permit him into her bedroom, never mind all the medical personnel it would take to complete the procedure--she was essentially raped. Christians have long held that raped women may abort babies conceived as a result of the rape. Christian morality is consistent, but either the Christians involved in this study hadn't thought through all the variables involved in these two examples or, as in the case of so many of these types of studies, they weren't permitted to discuss the two cases with the questioner. For instance, it's likely they were not permitted to say, "These two scenarios have about as much in common with one another as the Rocky Mountains have in common with a Florida beach."

Hauser and the Discover interviewer, Josie Glausiusz, seem to believe that they've hit upon something enlightening about human nature, natural selection and morality, but actually they've only proved they have faulty paradigms driving their research. With faulty paradigms, their research results are false. But you can be sure, with evolutionists at the helm, their results will become the paradigms for future policies that will drive programs for quite some time.

Are You Disgusted?

USA Weekend published an article in their December 13th, 2009, issue:

"An emotional reaction to impurity might inform conservative values."

The author states that if you'd be disgusted to discover you're drinking out of someone else's cup, you're probably Conservative.

What? Liberals aren't disgusted by this? They don't mind sharing swine flu virus or any number of other illnesses that can be transmitted by drinking from a sick person's cup?

According to the research, people who were disgusted by unflushed toilets were found to be more conservative than people who weren't disgusted. Obviously these people doing the research haven't been in very many unsanitary bathrooms otherwise they wouldn't be disparaging people who find unflushed toilets disgusting. Either that or, they're just nasty. I've heard there are people out there who are nasty, they like nasty things like unflushed toilets and snot nosed handkerchiefs and mugs with lipstick on them. Do you really want to be classified as a "Liberal" if it means you're someone who doesn't mind sharing a cup with a snagging, gagging person?

Quote from the article: "The more sensitive to disgust you are, the more you might react intuitively negative to sexual or other bodily behaviors that might be seen as unusual or immoral," says Yoel Inbar of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government."

I wonder what John F. Kennedy would say about all of this. He seemed kind of disgusted by some things, like mooching off the government. He said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." He was referring to whining and looking for a hand-out. These days the government wants a hand out. They want a hand out from any American who's got any money. They really believe in "ask what you can do for your country." They want to take from us whatever we earn so they can dole it back out to us as they see fit. They want to turn us all into a bunch of whiner babies. The government is a whiner baby. I'm disgusted.

Science Daily wrote back in June, 2009:"Easily grossed out? You might be a Conservative"

iStock photo from "Science Daily"

"Conservatives have argued that there is inherent wisdom in repugnance; that feeling disgusted about something -- gay sex between consenting adults, for example -- is cause enough to judge it wrong or immoral, even lacking a concrete reason."

Wait. Do these people not know what happens when gay people have "sex?" Do they really not know what gay men do? I mean, they insert body parts not designed to be inserted in places where stuff is only supposed to come out--do they not know this?!

Has it come to this, that basic hygiene is now passe, falling away like women having to wear dresses not pants and men having to wear hats out-of-doors? If you object to someone sneezing all over your coffee now you're one of those horrid conservatives. If you want to get with the program, go find unflushed toilets to use, soiled cups to drink out of and some gay men to applaud.

UGH! I'm disgusted. I guess I must be conservative!