ReasonTV's parody on UPS vs. FedEx

Some slightly salty language, but a great analysis of the on-going brouhaha over delivering packages, the agendas of labor unions and big business, and labor regulations.

Reason TV on Veterans Day

The two coolest holidays are in November: Veterans Day and Thanksgiving Day-- unmitigated opportunities to give thanks and to enjoy life. (Christmas and Easter should be the best, but especially the former has been so bastardized.)

Thanks to Reason for this tribute to those who have sacrificed so much for us, those who came before, and those who will come after us.

Murtha's boondoggle monument

From Katherine Mangu-Ward in Reason...

The John Murtha Johnstown–Cambria County Airport is a state-of-the-art facility. Its features include an $18 million runway made of reinforced concrete, a $7 million air traffic control tower, a $14 million hangar, an $8 million radar system, and a massive portrait of the airport’s benefactor and namesake, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA). Last year the airport hosted an average of 20 travelers a day. All three of its daily flights go to the same place: Washington, D.C.

During his tenure in Congress, Murtha has spent $150 million in taxpayer money on this monument to himself...

good work if you can get it

From World...

Philip Boroff's story about the $530,044 in salary and benefits made by Dennis O'Connell, who oversees props at Carnegie Hall. The rest of the stage crew-- two carpenters and two electricians-- had average incomes of $430,543 in 2008.

charter schools: increase choice, reduce costs, and often increase quality

We know that charter schools provide choice and reduce costs.

And on many occasions, they increase quality as well.

Here are the editorialists of the WSJ...

Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby recently found that poor urban children who attend a charter school from kindergarten through 8th grade can close the learning gap with affluent suburban kids by 86% in reading and 66% in math. And now Marcus Winters, who follows education for the Manhattan Institute, has released a paper showing that even students who don't attend a charter school benefit academically when their public school is exposed to charter competition.

Mr. Winters focuses on New York City public school students in grades 3 through 8. "For every one percent of a public school's students who leave for a charter," concludes Mr. Winters, "reading proficiency among those who remain increases by about 0.02 standard deviations, a small but not insignificant number, in view of the widely held suspicion that the impact on local public schools . . . would be negative." It turns out that traditional public schools respond to competition in a way that benefits their students.

Imagine that. Competition works....

proud of Webster's

From Scott Coffman in the C-J...

a facile reference to discrimination...oh well!

it's good to see that the voters in Maine don't discriminate against the dictionary...

our visit to Sojourn

I had heard about Sojourn over the years-- through my cousins and a few friends visiting and enjoying it-- and through coverage in the LEO.

Tonia and I took the boys there this weekend and enjoyed it. (I don't want to come across as a critic or a church-shopper/taster. But I don't know how else to describe what we experienced!)

I liked the music more than she did. It was impressive that they had arranged three Isaac Watts hymns and beyond that, sang arrangements of two classic hymns. In a funny way, it was far more traditional-- at least in terms of lyrics-- than a contemporary, seeker-sensitive church.

The sermon was relatively simple expository preaching-- from Ezekiel 1-3 in this case. A nice mix of conviction, application, exposition, etc. Very effective.

I really like the "responsive reading" portions and "the Lord's Supper" was different but quite appropriate. Child care was well-done; people were very friendly; it's a younger crowd but with some age diversity.

I think we'll be back!

who are these two and who do they look like?

Pacquiao and Cotto
Damon (with a mustache) and Alex Rodriguez

Colorado buys TARC buses for Louisville; Delaware pays for Georgetown sewers

Hey, wait a second. I wonder what Louisville and Georgetown residents paid for in other states?

Here's Sheldon Shafer in the C-J on the TARC story-- 17 buses, costing $330K apiece, for a total of $5.6 million, 80% of which came from taxpayers in other areas in the country. Thanks Colorado!

There's more good news in the article: taxpayers in the rest of the country will send us nine new buses in 2010. They cost $600K apiece.

And here's Debbie Harbeson in the Jeff/NA Tribune ripping into Ed Clere's recent article for bragging about bringing federal tax dollars in to fund a local project.

Ed is a nice enough guy. But the redistribution is ridiculous-- and his bragging about it was tasteless.

Here are some excerpts from another great piece by Harbeson:

Good for Clere. He performed his job well. This is exactly what he’s supposed to do. By filling out the right papers, he’s made quite a few people very thankful and they’ll take care of him now. So the system lives. The system grows.

I also can’t blame Clere for writing a column promoting his successful stimulation of sewers. What I don’t get is why he felt the need to pile on so much additional doo-doo.

Most ridiculous was his comment about how important this is because it helps Georgetown residents afford their sewer bills. Well of course it’s hard to afford it; they have to pay for the stimulus projects his cohorts are also handing out around the country.

He also explains that he’s making sure this area gets back our “fair share.” But what does that mean? What evidence does he have to prove that this was our area’s “fair share?” Does the citizen living in Podunk, USA, who received nothing think this is true? “Fair share” is impossible to calculate, nor do we know what economic activities have been stifled due to the stimulus handouts....

But by far, what bugged me most is when Clere congratulated himself while at the same time claiming to disagree with the federal government’s way of stimulating the economy. I simply do not get that. All of his energy was spent on continuing the system, in fact, legitimizing the system, and none on figuring out how to change it so why bother to even say that?...

I understand if money’s been taken and we can do something to get some back, it’s certainly practical to do so. Yet there must be a feeling that something’s inherently wrong with the system or else Clere would not feel the need to share that he disagrees at the same time he’s proclaiming success....

If we are to accept the idea that it’s only practical to try and get money back that’s been forcibly taken, then the root issue must be handing over the money in the first place, right? The money gives the system its power. Or to be more exact, the belief that it’s moral to take the money in the first place is what gives the system its power....

So how about you? Where do you stand on the basic morality of a group of people being able to take money by force...

C-J incoherence on the House health care proposal

Here is the Washington Post's balanced assessment of the House's health care proposal...

In contrast, here are the editorialists of the C-J with a dog's breakfast of incoherence and strange preferences for health care reform. My comments will be interspersed below...

The bill would require almost all Americans to obtain health insurance...

restricting freedom

...prohibit health insurers from denying people coverage because of pre-existing conditions...

increasing premiums (and dealing with symptoms rather than the underlying problem; see: Cochrane's work)

...mandate larger companies to cover their employees...

increase the cost of labor, and thus, unemployment (a brilliant idea during a recession, huh?)-- or reducing wages so that the mandate is compensation-neutral

...provide subsidies to enable qualifying households to buy coverage, expand free health care under Medicaid to lower-income Americans...

taxes up from both of those

...crack down on insurance company abuses, such as lifetime limits and many premium disparities...

translation: more regulation; higher premiums

Here's the funniest/saddest line:

It does too little to contain the rise in health costs...

I suppose you might put it that way, but I doubt that they intend it to be interpreted tongue-firmly-in-cheek.

And then we get to a biggie for the C-J-- not only unmitigated access to abortion, but subsidies for it as well.

Moreover, in an 11th hour compromise, House leaders agreed to a stipulation that a public plan and federal subsidies couldn't be used to pay for abortions. That provision is grotesquely unfair to women, for whom abortion is a legal right and a medical procedure central to giving them control over their own reproductive systems...

Then, the C-J tries to lay blame on "mostly congressional Republicans and insurance company officials, who want to kill meaningful reform. They say the nation can't afford reform, when actually it can't afford not to have reform."

Hey, look in the mirror and point at your Democratic colleagues. And actually, the question-begging is what sort of reform we ought to have.

They close by pointing to the "bravery" of Rep. Joseph Cao, the only Republican to vote for the House bill. But somehow Rep. Ben Chandler comes in for criticism of his "political courage", since he opposed the bill.

It's hilarious that they see both opposition and support as acts of courage!

a great Al Gore line?!

George Bush taking credit for the Berlin Wall coming down is like the rooster taking credit for the sunrise.

Al, dude...you fell so far-- from brilliance to whatever crazy stuff you're doing now...

Reagan's speech and larger role in the fall of the Wall

From the front page of the C-J (hat tip: Washington Times), it's interesting that the German chancellor was one of thousands to cross from East to West on that fateful evening-- and yesterday, apparently gave all (explicit) credit to Gorbachev.

Anyway, there's a good piece from James Mann in today's C-J on Reagan's larger role within the Fall of the Wall...

Mann argues for the importance of Reagan's diplomatic efforts-- in addition to the usual credit given to the speech and the arms build-up. He also makes a really nice point about Reagan addressing Gorbachev by name in the speech.

With the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the tape of Ronald Reagan's famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate is likely to be played and replayed. “Mr. Gorbachev,” he declared, “tear down this wall!” But how significant was the speech, really? How important was its seemingly defiant tone in reuniting Berlin and “winning” the Cold War?...

Reagan's address served the purpose of shoring up public support as he moved to upgrade American relations with the Soviet Union. It was Reagan's diplomacy with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, bitterly opposed at the time by his conservative former supporters, that did the most to create the climate in which the Cold War could end.

By the time Reagan delivered his Berlin Wall speech, in June 1987, he had held two summits with Gorbachev and was moving toward two more....Reagan met five times with Gorbachev, more than any other U.S. president had met a Soviet leader during the Cold War....

Reagan's conciliatory policies toward the Soviets provoked anguished and increasingly bitter denunciations from the right wing....

The Berlin Wall speech produced an intense fight within the Reagan administration....Reagan's foreign policy advisers balked at the “Mr. Gorbachev” line....Reagan decided to leave the line in, judging rightly that Gorbachev could handle it. The speech served as a strong reaffirmation of the value of freedom and a reminder that, even as Cold War tensions eased, the United States would not accept the continuing division of Berlin, Germany or Europe.

Many Americans now assume the key part of Reagan's speech was the idea of tearing down the wall. But that was nothing new. It was almost boilerplate...But it was quite a change for a U.S. president to directly appeal to “Mr. Gorbachev” to tear it down. That was new....

What he said got the attention not so much of Gorbachev but of East German Communist Party leader Erich Honecker. Officially, the Berlin Wall was, after all, East Germany's wall. Needless to say, Honecker wasn't about to tear down the wall. But still, he would have liked Reagan to ask him, not Gorbachev, to do so. By addressing the words to Gorbachev, Reagan was reminding everyone of the reality that East Germany couldn't exist without Soviet support. In fact, Honecker, who would be forced to resign just before the wall fell...

Some conservatives now contend that the Reagan-Gorbachev diplomacy was irrelevant to the unraveling of Soviet power. They credit his much more hard-line defense buildup and his Strategic Defense Initiative, hallmarks of his first term in office, with determining the outcome of the Cold War and forcing Gorbachev to capitulate.

Such contentions gloss over an important distinction. It was one thing for Gorbachev to decide that the Soviet Union could not compete with the United States in military terms. It was another for him to abandon the Cold War entirely.

...everyone remembered Reagan's impassioned, confrontational “tear down this wall” speech. Few recalled that Reagan's actual policies, bitterly contested at the time, were aimed at courting Gorbachev, building up his stature and doing business with him.

a memorial for the victims of Communism

ReasonTV on the 20th anniversary of the Wall...

Good stuff!

Uric's blog gets starting: eye on the economy

For all of you Macro fans out there...

Check out his work and commentary by clicking here.

a living, animal monument to the Cold War

From Cecilie Rohwedder in the WSJ...

It has been 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell. But deep in the forest here, a red deer called Ahornia still refuses to cross the old Iron Curtain.

Ahornia inhabits the thickly wooded mountains along what once was the fortified border between West Germany and Czechoslovakia. At the height of the Cold War, a high electric fence, barbed wire and machine-gun-carrying guards cut off Eastern Europe from the Western world. The barriers severed the herds of deer on the two sides as well....

The fence is long gone, and the no-man's land where it stood now is part of Europe's biggest nature preserve....But one species is boycotting the reunified animal kingdom: red deer. Herds of them roam both sides of the old NATO-Warsaw Pact border here but mysteriously turn around when they approach it. This although the deer alive today have no memory of the ominous fence....

In the seven years since wildlife biologists began tracking the deer, only two, a German stag named Florian and a Czech stag incongruously called Izabel, have crossed the border to stay. Lately, some young males have begun to explore the pastures on the other side, but they always come back. Females don't set foot in the once-forbidden area....

One reason, he says, is that deer have traditional trails, passed on through the generations, with a collective memory that their grounds end at the erstwhile barrier. Females, who stay with their mothers longer than males and spend more time absorbing their mothers' movements, stick even more closely to the traditional turf....

It looks like those memories will eventually fade too.

how soon we forget: November 1989 as "the most liberating month in arguably the most liberating year in human history"

From Matt Welch in Reason...

On August 23, 1989, officials from the newly reformed and soon-to-be-renamed Communist Party of Hungary ceased policing the country’s militarized border with Austria. Some 13,000 East Germans...fled across the frontier to the free world...the largest breach of the Iron Curtain...kicked off a remarkable chain of events that ended...with the...citizen dismantling of the Berlin Wall.

Twenty years later, the anniversary of that historic border crossing was noted in exactly four American newspapers, according to the Nexis database, and all four mentions were in reprints of a single syndicated column. August anniversaries receiving more media play in the U.S. included the 400th anniversary of Galileo building his telescope, the 150th anniversary of the first oil well, and the 25th anniversary of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. A Google News search of “anniversary” and “freedom” on August 23, 2009, turned up scores of Woodstock references before the first mention of Hungary.

Get used to it, if you haven’t already. November 1989 was the most liberating month of arguably the most liberating year in human history, yet two decades later the country that led the Cold War coalition against communism seems less interested than ever in commemorating, let alone processing the lessons from, the collapse of its longtime foe. At a time that fairly cries out for historical perspective about the follies of central planning, Americans are ignoring the fundamental conflict of the postwar world, and instead leapfrogging back to what Steve Forbes describes in this issue as the “Jurassic Park statism” of the 1930s...

I also like this quote from "the preeminent modern Central European historian" Timothy Garton Ash: "By comparison, ’68 was a molehill.”

who was the immediate catalyst for the East German fumble that led to the Wall coming down?

From Marcus Walker in the WSJ with a famous AP photo...

The world believes Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev or peaceful protests brought down the Berlin Wall 20 years ago...But for those who had front-row seats, the argument boils down to Ehrman vs. Brinkmann.

Riccardo Ehrman, a veteran Italian foreign correspondent, and Peter Brinkmann, a combative German tabloid reporter, both claim they asked the crucial questions at a news conference on Nov. 9, 1989, that led East German Politburo member Günter Schabowski to make one of the biggest fumbles in modern history.

Mr. Schabowski was supposed to announce a temporary bureaucratic procedure that would make it easier for East Germans to travel abroad, a tactic aimed at shoring up the Communist regime in the face of mass demonstrations.

Instead, he inadvertently opened the Berlin Wall.

When his fellow Communist leaders decided on new travel regulations, Mr. Schabowski was out of the room. Later that evening he skim-read the executive order, stuffed it in his briefcase, and headed off to meet the world's media.

Pressed on the meaning of the new travel policy -- When did it come into force? Did it apply to West Berlin? Did people need a passport? -- the flustered apparatchik rustled his papers and gave confusing answers that led the news media to believe the border was open, with immediate effect.

The result, once East Berliners had seen that night's news on West German television, was chaos at border crossings across the city.

At Bornholmer Strasse, one of the main checkpoints in central Berlin, confused border guards couldn't get clear orders on how to deal with the crush, and debated whether to open fire. Instead, they opened the barrier, and the Berlin Wall was history....

Among those who are aware of the incident, Mr. Ehrman generally gets credit....Mr. Ehrman, now 80 years old and retired, recalls asking the first question about freedom to travel, and the first follow-up questions that rattled the Politburo spokesman....

But Mr. Ehrman is puffing up his role, says Mr. Brinkmann...Mr. Ehrman merely posed a question about a previous travel proposal, Mr. Brinkmann says. The crucial questions about timing and West Berlin were his alone, he says.

And while Mr. Ehrman was being feted that night, Mr. Brinkmann, by his own account, wasn't yet done bringing down communism. He says he secured the opening of Checkpoint Charlie, the Wall's most famous crossing, by arguing with its guards....

The article provides the relevant excerpt from the Nov. 9, 1989, news conference...

Archive footage from East German TV packs some surprises that nobody quite remembers. For an hour, the press conference is a nonevent...Mr. Schabowski rambles on about the party leadership's deliberations that day.

With time running out, Mr. Ehrman asks about travel restrictions. Mr. Schabowski drops the bombshell that the regime has decided to allow East Germans to travel west or emigrate.

Three reporters launch a rapid-fire cross-examination: Mr. Ehrman, Mr. Brinkmann -- and Krzysztof Janowski, a political refugee from Communist Poland who worked for Voice of America (and who now says he doesn't remember details of the day). Together, the trio cause Mr. Schabowski to scratch his head and read his brief aloud, learning its content himself as he goes.

Finally, a fourth voice draws Mr. Schabowski's eyes to the opposite side of the room. The voice repeats the key question: "When does that go into effect?" The Politburo member scans his papers and quotes words out of context: "Immediately. Without delay," he blunders.

The fourth man has never been identified.

A fourth man? Is this a Daniel 3 occasion?!

my visit to the Berlin Wall

I was fortunate to visit the Berlin Wall in the summer of 1988-- on the first of my two trips during grad school to Western Europe.

I was surprised to learn that there were really two walls, between which was a dead zone. This prevented many more people from trying to escape, since one would have to climb two walls and run a gauntlet of land mines and bullets from guard towers.

Along with that, consider that the construction of the wall-- along the entire length of the middle/heart of Berlin-- tore down blocks of productive activity. Can you imagine tearing down two city blocks through the heart of our largest cities-- simply to imprison its people?

I was traveling with a friend of mine-- a nice guy, but one who hadn't thought much about political economy. As we walked around East Berlin, he said "this isn't that bad". My reply: "All you need to know is that they've built a wall to keep people in."

In fact, it wasn't that great. The things I remember: one flavor of semi-solid ice cream, cardboard-like toilet paper, uniformity, and dreariness. In my photo album, I have pictures of West Berlin-- and then you turn the page to see East Berlin. Almost without fail, people ask "what happened?" The contrast is staggering: the gray buildings and rows of the same tiny cars.

the background of "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"

Credit for the phrase goes to "the writer who had the assignment, Peter Robinson". For text and audio of the speech of June 12, 1987, click here. (The key phrase is uttered around minute 12 of the recording. Good luck in trying to listen to it without tearing up.)

Reagan invokes Kennedy and the blockade of Berlin. Along with Reagan's reduction in marginal tax rates, these two crucial parallels in public policy tie their presidencies together. If you liked Kennedy, you have to respect Reagan.

From President Reagan's head speech-writer, Anthony Dolan, in the Wall Street Journal (hat tip: Linda Christiansen)...

Ronald Reagan would embarrass himself and the country by asking Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, which was going to be there for decades. So the National Security Council (NSC) staff and State Department had argued for many weeks to get Reagan's now famous line removed from his June 12, 1987, Berlin speech.

With a fervor and relentlessness I hadn't seen over the prior seven years even during disputes about "the ash-heap of history" or "evil empire," they kept up the pressure until the morning Reagan spoke the line....

The Berlin event for us was the quintessential chance—in front of Communism's most evocative monument—to enunciate the anti-Soviet counter-strategy that Reagan had been putting in place since his first weeks in office....

As commentators have noticed, much of the rest of the speech is also memorable, with enduring ideas and stately cadences....

how materialism damages the family

Powerful/prophetic words from Russell Moore in Touchstone...

...one of the roots of the family crisis all around us—in the pews we sit in or preach to every week—is the wallet in our own back pocket.

It is no accident, after all, that our Ancient Foe first appears in Holy Scripture as a snake...As philosopher Leon Kass puts it, “For the serpent is a mobile digestive tract that swallows its prey whole; in this sense the serpent stands for pure appetite.” Indeed he does—and the whole of Scripture and of Christian tradition warns the Church against the way of the appetites, the way of consuming oneself to death.

We are commanded away from the path of Esau, who sells his inheritance for a pile of red stew (Heb. 12:16–17). We’re directed away from the god of the belly (Phil. 3:19). From the Tree in the garden to the wilderness beyond the Jordan to the present hour, the people of God are tempted to turn their digestive or reproductive tracts away from the mystery of Christ and toward the self as god.

This is true in any era, but there is a special danger, it seems, for those of us living in an era of unparalleled affluence....

Why does the seemingly godly church member in one of our congregations or parishes drive his pregnant teenage daughter to the nearest city under cover of darkness to obtain an abortion? Because, no matter how much he “votes his values,” when crisis hits, he wants his daughter to have a “normal” life. He is “pro-life,” with, as one feminist leader put it, three exceptions: rape, incest, and my situation....

Why do our pastors and church leaders speak bluntly about homosexuality but not about divorce?...

Why do we speak endlessly about marital communication and “love languages” but never address the question of whether institutionalized day care is good for children, or for their parents? It’s because pastors know that couples would reply that they could never afford to live on the provision of the husband alone....if living means living in the neighborhoods in which they now live with the technologies they now have. Why do we never ask whether it might be better to live in a one-bedroom apartment or a trailer park than to outsource the rearing of one’s children? It’s because the American way of life seems so normal to us that such things do not even seem to be options at all....

Christian reflections on (Christian) burial

Excerpts from a symposium in Touchstone...

Burial Plots & Parking Lots by Russell D. Moore
Our Buried Sentiments by Wilfred M. McClay
Landscapes of the Dead by Anthony Esolen
The Grave Not Taken by David Mills
Stone Sobriety by S. M. Hutchens
In Grave Country by Darryl Hart


Powerful thoughts from Russell Moore...

Drive by your local booming suburban church, or the up-and-coming congregation everyone’s talking about in your community. You might find a state-of-the-art children’s complex, complete with antibiotic soap dispensers in every corner. You might find a Family Life Center—previously known as a gym—with a basketball court, foosball tables, maybe even an Olympic-size pool. You’ll almost certainly find a feeding hall, perhaps with a franchised gourmet coffee kiosk nearby.

What you will not find is a graveyard.

Not many churches have graveyards anymore. In some ways, that’s understandable. Churches that are growing and evangelistic rightly conclude that sharing the gospel with the living is more important than remembering the dead.

We all know churches that carefully manicure their graveyards and remember who is buried where. They also remember who paid for what pillar—so don’t you try to remove it to create additional space for your children’s Bible fellowship area. For them the graveyard is a symbol of a concern more for maintaining their family genealogies and the memories of the past than forging forward for the Kingdom.

But, still. I wonder if we are losing something by outsourcing the care of our dead to the funeral industry. Did we lose something important, maybe even something biblical, when we paved over our graveyards?

The church graveyard might serve to remind us of something that we as contemporary Christians, with all our flash and verve, seem to forget too often these days. We are going to die....

Maybe a cemetery would serve as an icon that all our Babels will collapse, all our wood, hay, and stubble will be incinerated before the Judgment Seat....

The antidote for such pride is to consider one’s end....not just a check on the pride of individuals, but of churches as well....

We’re a Kingdom, a Kingdom that spans the ages and includes the dead and the unborn...

I’m realistic enough to know that the church graveyard is a thing of the past....But maybe we would see something of what we’re missing if we took the time to walk among the tombstones once in a while....Maybe if we spent more time in graveyards, we might reconsider the need for them....the graveyard is not just a sign that we haven’t forgotten our dead. It’s a sign that we’re just waiting for them—and for ourselves—to hear one last invitation hymn....

Wilfred McClay opens with the story of a woman walking her dog and stumbling upon the remains of a human corpse. This negligence-- and hundreds of cases like it-- was the work of "Tri-State Crematory, a family-owned business hired to deal with bodies from funeral homes in three states. Some of the bodies were “stacked like cordwood”; and bones "were scattered through the woods like leaves, skulls mixed with leg bones in a ghoulish jumble”.

McClay then asks why there was so much "outrage" and "vehemence".

Why, when so many Americans see nothing exceptional in the taking of a pre-born life, when they are becoming inured to the warehousing of the elderly and infirm, when they regard the protection of embryonic life as itself a laughable proposition, when they routinely accept cremation, and the dismemberment of corpses for science, did this bizarre episode strike horror in so many?...

It goes to the fact that there is something of primal importance about the way we treat the dead...

One might even say that burial has a certain civilizational priority, that what we make of the dead creates the foundation for what we make of ourselves....Prehistoric nomads established permanent habitations of the dead...Only later did such men exchange their mobility for settled habitations...

A typically poetic effort from Anthony Esolen, poignant words from S.M. Hutchens, and something of history from Darryl Hart-- but I don't see anything to excerpt...

Finally, this from David Mills-- on the unfortunate symbolism inherent in cremation (aside from whether it is biblical, unbiblical, or abiblical)...

She could not explain her objection, but I understand it, and share it. I know, and explained to her, the arguments allowing cremation. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church tersely puts it, “The Church permits cremation, provided that it does not demonstrate a denial of belief in the resurrection of the body.”

But still, it feels wrong to burn a body that could be laid to rest. It may be “licit,” in the technical language of canon law, but it does not seem to me proper. It may be permitted, but that does not mean it is good when you can accomplish the ideal....

You burn something to destroy it...Ashes are in every other case something you throw away....We bury things we want to preserve, like time capsules, or to transform, like seeds and bulbs. Planting is the main symbol we think of when we think of burying something. It is an act of hope, of trust....

Christian reflections on (Christian) dating, courtship and marriage

Excerpts from four article in Touchstone-- "a symposium on dating, courtship and marriage"...

That Could Be Arranged by S. M. Hutchens
Not-So-Blind Date by Jocelyn Mathewes
Three’s No Crowd by Kevin Offner
Father Knows Maybe Not by James Hitchcock

From Hutchens, on arranged marriages:

One can see, in light of modern experimentations in these matters, why in traditional societies marriages are arranged by the parents. A return to this in some form is perhaps the next step in the right direction for groups of Christian families that wish to leave the dating culture as (it has turned out to be) one of the fundamental dynamics of family life.

But for this, children will need to be educated from their earliest years that (1) we are Christians, and think and do many things differently than the surrounding culture, in which pagan influences predominate, and (2) your parents will be choosing your mate....

From Mathewes, on good dating:

I think the problems we see in dating really originate in deeper cultural problems: particularly the distorted culture of romance and the tendency to extend adolescence....

I vividly remember a number of conversations with my mother during my mid-teenage years. We often sat together at the kitchen table, sipping tea and talking. She would tell me how frustrating her dating experiences were in college: the pressure for sex, the disillusionment with marriage, and the noncommittal guys who were a “waste of time” (so much for “learning something”). She recounted awkward blind dates when she actively avoided or disliked kissing, and told me how wonderful it was to discover that kissing someone she loved—in this case, my father—was so exhilarating.

My mother taught me that you start looking when you’re thinking about getting married. Through my parents’ example, I learned from an early age that sex was completely intertwined within a relationship, sanctified by marriage, in which you shared your thoughts, your feelings, your whole life together. So when we started dating, Stephen and I were looking towards marriage as our possible future. It seems to have worked....

From Kevin Offner, on getting the (married) Church involved...

In my dating talk, I emphasize the importance of male initiative, the dangers of “casual” dating, the need to refrain from physical and emotional intimacy before marriage, and facing the reality that not everyone who wants to get married necessarily will get married. But without fail, the point in my talk that gets the strongest positive response is when I talk about the importance of “third parties” in dating....

How can the Church be of some countercultural help to her young single adults as they seek to move towards marriage? There is no silver bullet that will revolutionize today’s dating culture, but one practical change can and should be made, and it is this: Third parties need to begin taking some responsibility to help single Christian adults meet each other....While I applaud S. M. Hutchens for targeting parents here, getting parents involved in arranging marriages for their twenty-something or thirty-something single progeny usually just isn’t that realistic. These single adults often live hundreds of miles from their parents, and their parents often aren’t Christians....

We marrieds need to take the time and effort to get to know the singles in our churches....we must pray for them—praying specifically for God’s will for their marital status....Couples could be encouraged to have dinner parties where [singles] are invited...not chosen haphazardly but only after much prayer and hard thinking. The evening should mix light and serious activities and conversation....

And from James Hitchcock, on the overarching importance of building character in one's children and the a-biblical promotion of "arranged marriages"...

Parents should attempt to influence their children’s decision to marry, most fundamentally by forming their children’s characters over many years, subsequently by offering advice and, if necessary, strong opinions about prospective mates (although such opinions may often prove to be counterproductive). But for parents to attempt actually to choose their children’s spouses is ultimately not defensible in Christian terms....

Obviously, people often make catastrophically bad choices, and sometimes parents can see those coming, but parents sometimes make equally bad judgments, not only about their children’s marriages but about their own as well.

Civil freedom, including the choice of a spouse, comes to us ultimately from God...Arranged marriages, like imposed state religions, are attempts to forestall sin by diminishing freedom, thereby short-circuiting the economy of salvation itself.

a good marriage: more mundane and more glorious; less romanticized and less toil

From Anthony Esolen in Touchstone...

...there are twin errors to avoid in talking about marriage...One is to suppose that all your emotional longings are going to be fulfilled...once you walk down that aisle...The other is to suppose that marriage is tough, involves hard, hard work, backbreaking, grueling, awful, but such a payoff...The truth I think is elsewhere, and is much more mundane and much more glorious at the same time.

divine revelation as an "inside joke"

A nice little observation from Peter Leithart in Touchstone...

I tell a joke, and you get it....we exchange a mental wink.

Humor provides a pathway into the hermeneutics of texts and communication. It also seems to provide a pathway into the sociology of communication. When the hearer/reader "gets it," he establishes a sometimes thrilling bond with the author/speaker.

God speaks and writes, and the more we "get" the inside jokes, the more inside we get. Having the mind of Christ is like sharing a joke that outsiders never understand. The Spirit who gives the mind of Christ is, after all, the Spirit of joy, the Mirth-Master, who makes fisherman preachers sound like drunks. The church is not merely an "interpretive" or "hermeneutical" community; it's a communion in humor.

C.S. Lewis quote-of-the-week

“For mere improvement is no redemption, though redemption always improves people…God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better, but like turning a horse into a winged creature.”

--Mere Christianity, book 4, ch. 10

Obama bans E.J. Dionne from the White House

Well, he ought to be banned-- if Obama is going to chastise Fox.

David Broder got it right (also in the C-J)-- and even the C-J editorialists gave an accurate representation ("GOP's Good Day"). Dems should be worried. But the GOP is not necessarily producing a great alternative and is prone to at least some troubles with civil war.

But Dionne is hopelessly biased or needs to step outside and throw his crack pipe as far away as possible. Check out this drivel from Dionne on the election results from Tuesday (hat tip: C-J).

Tuesday's elections were a rebuke to the right wing and a warning to Democrats.

They were also a timely reminder that President Obama needs to tune up his celebrated political organization and find a way to make Americans feel hopeful again.

The night's biggest loser was the national conservative political machine — the wealthy tax-cutters at the Club for Growth and the Palin-Limbaugh-Beck complex. The Beltway Right shoved aside local Republicans in an upstate New York congressional race, imposed their own candidate...and went down in a heap....

That is the fact from this week that Democrats would be fools to ignore. It's not a resurgent right wing that should trouble Obama's party. Indeed, the stronger the right's role in shaping the Republican message, the harder it will be for middle-of-the-road voters to use the Republicans to express their discontent. But for the moment, the thrill is gone from politics, and that is very dangerous for the mainstream progressive movement that Obama promised to build.

funny video with Bob, Dave, Kyle and Wesley Korir

This video was used as the intro to the final message in their series on "FIT: Faith in Training".

Enjoy!

two more thoughts on spiritual warfare

This morning, a group of us went to a friend's house to anoint it with oil and to pray the power of God over external demonic influences in that home.

Two things of interest:

In economics, we frequently talk about "opportunity costs"-- in our choice to use resource X in a certain way, we forsake all other uses of X at that point of time, and in particular, forfeiting the value of the next-best alternative. Applied to spiritual warfare, we asked the demon(s) to leave the home this morning-- and in essence, encouraged them to move on to their second-best alternative. It occurred to me that we should always pray for their next destination-- and their eventual destination.

I was struck by the husband's discussion of the shower-- and one girl's fear of it. The shower should be a place of refreshment, solitude, cleansing, enjoyment, etc. But it also a place of vulnerability and nakedness. In addition to praying that the shower would be a good place rather than a bad place, I prayed that baggage from those experiences-- e.g., in the sexual arena-- would be taken away.

May God bless that home-- as they continue to bless Him and others. May God grant them courage and wisdom as they raise their children.

"cutting" as a spiritual problem

When is the practice of "cutting"-- cutting one's own body-- a physical problem with psychological manifestations rather than a spiritual problem with psychological manifestations?

At least on occasion-- if not most/all occasions-- it is spiritual. (And I love the end of the story-- how people respond to the healing and to Jesus!)

From Mark 5, we read about Jesus' encounter with the demon-possessed man in the region of the Gerasenes:

²When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. ³This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain. ⁴For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. ⁵Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.

⁶When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. ⁷He shouted at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won't torture me!" ⁸For Jesus had said to him, "Come out of this man, you evil spirit!"

⁹Then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?"

"My name is Legion," he replied, "for we are many." ¹⁰And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.

¹¹A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. ¹²The demons begged Jesus, "Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them." ¹³He gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

¹⁴Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened. ¹⁵When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. ¹⁶Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man—and told about the pigs as well. ¹⁷Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region.

the Onion having fun with pregnancy and pro-choice

From The Onion...

In a bizarre case that has baffled medical professionals across the country, surgeons at Albuquerque's Veterans Memorial Hospital removed a living eight-pound man from the confines of an area woman's vagina Monday.

The unusually small man, who has refused to identify himself or give a reason for his presence in the vagina, was extremely disoriented throughout the incident, and, according to eyewitnesses, was "nude and covered in blood and gore." Though the man strenuously resisted rescue attempts, screaming and kicking wildly at medical personnel, he has not yet been charged with any crime....

"We get all kinds of strange things here in the emergency unit," said Dr. Carlos Mendoza, a surgeon at Veterans Memorial, "but this was something new. At first glance, Mrs. Hessman appeared to be obese, but upon closer examination, it became apparent that she was actually suffering from severe abdominal distension. After she described her painful symptoms, we conducted an examination of her vagina. Imagine our shock and surprise when we discovered that there, looking back at us, was a tiny human head."

After overcoming their initial shock, doctors discovered that the grotesque miniature head belonged to a small man. The attending physicians performed emergency surgery to forcibly remove him, then notified local police.

"At this time, we have no idea how this man came to be situated within the woman's vagina, or what motivation he might have had for being there," said Albuquerque police chief Burke Manning. "His dazed state, public defecating, and lack of clothing suggest that he is a mentally ill homeless man who was seeking shelter. Yet it's hard to believe that someone so feeble and mentally disturbed would be capable of such an intrusion. We have not ruled out the possibility that he had help."

Manning is advising Albuquerque residents to stay calm. "This is likely an isolated event," he said. "But we are nevertheless considering conducting a search of all area vaginas to see if any more small, naked men are on the prowl."

The eight-pound man has thus far refused to cooperate with police, responding to all questions with strange gurgling noises. He is also prone to sudden, violent mood swings, resting peacefully one moment and wailing uncontrollably the next....

"This man seems to have undergone some sort of massive trauma within the last 24 hours which has, in effect, wiped his memory clean and turned his mind into a blank slate," Mendoza said. "To be honest, this case couldn't be any weirder if a stork had dropped him out of the sky."

Harbeson: "How to run a business like a government"

AWESOME!!

The title alone is worth the price of admission!

Debbie Harbeson's latest, as published in the Jeff/NA News-Tribune...

...some citizens are grumbling that “government needs to learn to run like a business!”

I used to think that too, until I realized I had it completely backward....here are some tips on “How to Run a Business like a Government”...

Tip One
When you choose your “services” to provide, don’t concern yourself with market demand. This is irrelevant because you are going to initiate force against people in order to fund your service. However, if you want to lessen the chance of skepticism, find one person who’s struggling with an issue and use this anecdote as evidence of a “crisis” which your service happens to “fix.”

Tip Two
Hire someone to hold your gun for you...See, what you are going to do is force people to pay for your service, but you want to have some semblance of illusion here that what you’re doing isn’t threatening violence to ensure compliance....

Tip Three
Another important element for success is creating a board of elected officials who vote for your various price increase schemes. This will make your “customers” feel like they have a say in your pricing decisions. In addition, the elections will keep people so busy that they stop thinking about that gun you have in the background.

Tip Four
You will run into people who don’t want to pay because they don’t need your service at all, or would prefer to use a competitor. Just smile and tell them they are free not to use the service, all they need to do is fund it. BONUS TIP: It’s often very helpful to instill guilt by inserting abstract phrases like “social contract” and “common good.”

Tip Five
Besides the guy with the gun and the elected officials, you will of course want to hire other people to administer the service. (Unless you’re in Jeffersonville, in that case just hire Republican elected officials.) Don’t worry about ability; you’re developing dependency not competency....

Tip Six
Keep information flowing on the importance of your service and how well it works. Warning: Don’t fall into the trap of trying to determine whether your service really does work well. You can’t figure this out because this information only comes from using the voluntary market...

Looks like that’s all the room I have for now, but this should get you started just fine in operating your business without having to concern yourself with persuading people to voluntarily trade with you for something they consider to be valuable and worthy.

IUS MBA ranked 9th in the nation by Business Week

We were 18th in the nation last time.

The University of Louisville moves into the 2nd tier, coming in at #34...Congrats to them as well!

Here is the overview, the part-time MBA rankings, and an overview of the school...