Normally I clearly advocate the punishment of perjury, but the prosecutions of Scooter Libby and Martha Stewart indicate clearly to me that something is way out of hand. Put gently, there is something amiss when a persecutor (oops, prosecutor) spends years of his life trying to prove that someone lied to the court, but there is no other crime to be investigated.To find out exactly what is wrong, let's go to the Scriptures and see how Moses defines the punishment of perjury in Deut. 19:16-19. The "meat" of the passage:If the witness is a false witness, who has testified falsely against his brother, then you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother; so you shall put away the evil from among you.In other words, if a witness' words are not relevant to the prosecution of a crime or resolution of a civil action, the Torah offers no punishment for perjury apart from conscience and the wrath of God. I dare suggest we should listen to both the Bible and Blackstone and remember that without motive, there is no crime.
Although I, having grown up rooting for the Cubbies, am loath to admit this, I must salute Cardinals (sigh) shortstop David Eckstein, who draws a beautiful picture of what baseball and sports is supposed to be all about. Apparently not the most physically gifted of players (I can associate), he makes up for it by more or less out-hustling the competition.Not a bad analogy for faith and life, really. Visit a ballpark sometime, and watch. More often than not, you'll see tremendously gifted people being outhustled and outplayed by people who really want to be there.
Evidently, Al Gore III was caught speeding--with illegal drugs--at 100mph in his Prius. While I don't condone the apparent drug use, I do salute the fact that, unlike his father, he's actually sacrificing something for the environment by driving a hybrid. I also am impressed that a Prius can do 100mph. Early versions were said to top out at about 75mph.On the other hand, somehow I don't think that a Prius gets good mileage at 100mph. I'd guess about 20mpg or so--air resistance goes as the square of speed, so if you get ~40mpg at 75mph, it's not going to be pretty at 100mph. So maybe he wasn't doing so much for the environment after all.
...two skinny tires at 90psi, going 15-20mph, and pushing out the day that I might need blood pressure and cholesterol medication. I'd also guess that my bicycle fares slightly better in crash tests than the latest car from China. No, the passenger compartment is not supposed to collapse in a 40mph crash. Ouch.Seeing that, along with melamine in food products, seafood grown in untreated sewage, antifreeze in toothpaste, and so on, makes me wonder exactly why we're continuing to grant them normal trading status. Might be a good idea to tax Chinese imports so we could make sure they're safe before letting them into the country.
....when specialists in a given area make the claim that "the science is settled" or "just trust us on this one"? Contemplate this in light of the basic scientific (and logical) principle of reproducibility; a good researcher provides, in his communication, the tools that a skeptic or other interested party can use to duplicate his results.So the specialist here is more or less denying the principle of reproducibility by doing this, showing himself to be not a scientist or even an educated man, but rather a technician--even if sporting a Ph.D. and status as a full professor.This is something to watch out for in any academic setting, I dare say. It's all too easy to achieve the highest academic and professional credentials and yet be utterly uneducated.
Two interesting thoughts:Todd Mitchell on reverence. And here, too.Proverbs 14:26. "In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence; and his children shall have a place of refuge."No comment from me, besides the fact that you already know I've been thinking about it and think it's worth mentioning to y'all.
It appears that the prospects for cellulosistic ethanol--made from straw, sawdust, and other materials ordinarily left to rot--are more or less dismal. Yes, it appears that the government has started to fund research into this not-yet-ready-for-prime-time technology, and thus for the forseeable future, it's a pretty good bet that it'll join oil shale, solar, wind, hybrid vehicles, and corn ethanol as technologies that can only be sustained by massive subsidies.Thankfully, there are cost-effective ways to reduce fossil fuel consumption. However, you generally won't find them getting funding from the government because they don't need it. If only Congress and bureaucrats would take a hint.
Joe asked a good question; how would reducing carbon emissions injure or kill people? The answer is simple; cost/benefit analysis. If I spend my money reducing carbon emissions, that is money I don't have for other, possibly more vital, needs.In the case of "remedying" global climate change, the cost of implementing the Kyoto accords is currently closing in on $400 billion, while the benefit is an estimated temperature reduction (IPCC estimate) of 0.004C by 2050. More or less, $100 trillion might reduce global temperatures by 1C.Put simply, alternatives to fossil fuels are currently more expensive than fossil fuels, and any bureaucratic attempts to "change" the economics and physics of the situation will necessarily increase the costs endured by customers--just ask anyone looking for an apartment in New York City, for example.Now consider what else that $100 trillion might be used for. Maybe it could be DDT to keep mosquitoes out of tropical homes--and save half a million lives annually. Maybe it could be for bigger cars and the gasoline to run them--and save 3000 lives annually, according to the NHTSA. Or maybe it could be for air conditioning for senior citizens in France--which could have saved 15000 lives a few summers back.The reality is that energy use enables our prosperity and our health. Sometimes we can do better with less energy--and we'll be rewarded with lower utility bills. However, when government gets into the act (CAFE standards, DDT bans, and so on), the result is generally not so benign. All too often, it kills.
Evidently, Illinois Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama is now claiming that some evangelicals have "hijacked" the faith, claiming that that which was intended to "bring us together" was being wrongly used to "drive us apart."I'm sad to say that it doesn't surprise me that a speaker at the convention for the "Unitarians Considering Christ" (officially "United Church of Christ") would ignore numerous Biblical examples of faith splitting the faithful from the faithless in making such a pronouncement. Of course, if they can't figure out the Trinity from the Scriptures, it's probably a safe bet that they'll have a bit of trouble with other Biblical doctrines, too.Exactly how accusing evangelicals of "hijacking faith" is going to bring people together, or how it's going to "court evangelicals," as Obama suggests he'd like to do, is beyond me. Maybe he's counting on the "Stockholm Syndrome" to get votes?
Apparently, step one may be to fail to have children. If you are not faithful in the little things (see Malachi 2:14-15, Genesis 9:7), you're probably not going to be faithful in the big things, either.
Consider a few points of reference:The Bayly Brothers (Presbyterian pastors) link a piece showing what happens when the bulls decide to stand and fight the lions. They suggest that it has some implications for what happens when men decide to lead and serve as Christ did.The HSLDA makes the comment from time to time that "homeschoolers don't make good middle management." In other words, those who take care of themselves aren't comfortable passing the buck for a living. If true, this says far more nice things about homeschooling than "merely" winning the Spelling and Geography Bees.My church just selected new deacons, and I'm once again struck by the fact that God names character traits, not skills or innate intelligence. Not many middle managers on the deacon board, either.Do not be conformed, but be transformed. Be a bull--and one who doesn't wait to confront the lions that would rip you and your family to shreds.
Take a look here at a series by Canada's National Post. A series of scientists involved in global warming research are more or less demonstrating that there is more than one way to approach the evidence, and more significantly IMO, that those who advocate the "standard" interpretation of the evidence respond to their opponents not with evidence, but rather with ad hominem attacks, withholding of research grants, and deliberate falsification of the evidence.I don't object to the idea that it would be smart to reduce fossil fuel use. I did, after all, live in LA for two summers, and I could tell when the smog days were simply by how well I could breathe. I do, however, object to the idea that government somehow has the right to tell us exactly how we can, and cannot, use energy.
First, you apparently subsidize biodiesel by about a buck a gallon here in the U.S. OK, it's a start to reduce petroleum usage--no problem, right?Um, no. Even beyond the pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers used to grow the soybeans and other oilseeds, you're planting, cultivating, and harvesting using quite a bit of petroleum and its derivatives. So like ethanol (which burns 2/3 of a gallon of gasoline to get the equivalent of one gallon), there is something of a difficulty getting more energy out than you put in.It gets worse, though. Evidently, some enterprising folks have figured that the subsidy applies even when the oils used for the biodiesel don't come from our own country. They are apparently importing Malaysian palm oil, mixing it with a bit of diesel fuel, and selling it to Germany while pocketing the subsidy. So you're paying for Malaysian farmers to ship these oils about 20,000 miles or so to Germany--using real diesel fuel to power the ships, of course.Nope, we're not done yet. To add insult to injury, it actually turns out that a lot of those new palm oil plantations are clearing rainforest and burning peat bogs to get the land ready for palm oil cultivation; in the process covering large areas of Malaysia and Indonesia with smoky haze and releasing (by some accounts) as much carbon dioxide as Europe does.Forget your Suburban. It seems that one of the biggest threats to the environment is subsidies for "environmentally safe" fuels.
In this one, he provides evidence that, contrary to pro-abortion rhetoric, abortion is linked, most likely causally, to increases in illegitimacy. Go figure; tell Dad he doesn't have to marry the girl he impregnates, and he's not going to stick around.In this one, he takes on the liberal idea that the death penalty doesn't deter crime, and exposes a very nasty bait & switch on the part of death penalty opponents. Instead of using a real metric (executions per # of murders or murderers), they've used executions per # of prisoners. Given that most prisoners haven't committed capital crimes, it's no surprise that this wrong metric doesn't show anything.
Walter Williams notes that when we tinker with the tax system to benefit some and impede others, what we're really doing is undermining the rule of law. Sobering thought indeed.
