Category: Uncategorized

Just ask Stanford. I have a feeling that if you compared the average SAT scores of the Cardinal versus Alabama, the former would almost double the latter. Doesn’t always help on the basketball court, obviously.

Scott comments: The “seemingly” was superfluous and unnecesary. I absolutely do believe what I wrote.

Very well. The statement then reads: “To deny G-d’s absolute knowledge and control of history is to deny his omnipotence.” Only it isn’t. Look up the definition of omnipotence. And it is denying his ability to leave history to work itself out that is to actually deny his omnipotence. Power is capability, not action. Does George Bush not have the power to unleash nuiclear war because he has not done so? As I have stated many times, omnipotence + omniscience does not equal omniderigence. This does not mean omniderigence is necessarily precluded, only that it is not inherently implied either.

To know all and to have the unlimited power with which to act is not synonymous with actively using such power over all participants in all situations. I don’t doubt that God has a Plan for humanity, I do doubt that it a) requires the direct involvement of every single human in all of history in order to come to pass and b) is utterly inflexible. I further doubt that we are nothing more than puppets being used to stage a show for the benefit of the angels, divine and fallen, as I heard in a sermon at a large church today. I don’t believe Jesus Christ came primarily for the edification of supernatural beings, I believe he came as a lifeline for those who very much wish to be rescued from a ship sinking of its own accord. I readily admit that I could be wrong, but “could” and “are” are two very different things.

Furthermore, I am perfectly capable of denying God’s omnipotence if I meant to do so. Obviously, I don’t and haven’t. Childlike faith, good. Childlike inability to understand well-defined concepts, not so good.

Maybe this “girl” (I don’t know her age, because I’ve only read your comment on her statement) expressed her sentiment on a very deep issue in a simplistic manner. So what? Most people don’t give much thought to the issue and express their belief in a simple way.

Which, of course, was my original point. Most people believe stupid and simple things in all aspects of their life because they’ve never devoted much thought to anything. I believed the crust was the best part of the bread for the better part of three decades, not because I’m incredibly stupid, but because my mother told me that when I was very young and I had literally never thought about it. When Space Bunny laughed and asked me why the crust was the best part, I thought about it for the first time – which took all of ten milleseconds – and realized how absurd the notion was.

The best part was when she then asked my brother about it, who looked surprised, and then angry. He left the room a moment later, shouting “Mom!”

Seven-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Warren Sapp agreed to terms on a seven-year, $36.6 million contract with the Oakland Raiders on Saturday, ending his nine-year relationship with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Yes, that’s the answer when you’ve got an aging team in decline. Sign overrated loudmouths who are already in decline themselves. I have to say, as one who is still bitter about the last of the Vikings’ four Super Bowl losses, I’m watching these developments with barely suppressed glee. It will be interesting to see Sapp explain how it’s all not his fault come mid-November.

I’m growing increasingly amused by the argument that no one believes in what the Sovereigntists call hyper-Calvinism and what I call omniderigence or an uber control freak concept of God. I attended a friend’s church this morning, and the sermon was devoted to explaining the question why bad things happen. In the specific example with which it began today, why God would “call home” a young minister in a plane crash on the way to the land to which he’d been called to minister, for which he’d spent a good part of his short life training.

What was particularly interesting is that the pastor used terminology very similar to that which I use in describing my own doubts regarding the notion that God orchestrates evil for our benefit, although the pastor used the tanalogy of a play’s producer instead of a puppet master. The base concept, of course, was precisely as I’ve described it in the past. When he read from Job and then pointed out the similarity of the description of Satan roaming about the earth to the verse where he is pictured roaming about the earth as a devouring lion, I felt like calling out: dude, there’s the answer to your question. The young preacher didn’t get called home, he was devoured by the lion! Hence the concept of a spiritual war – there are casualties even if our weapons aren’t physical, some of the enemy’s are.

Now, we’ve hashed and rehashed this out here before, and no doubt we will again, but I am not trying to beat a dead horse here in stating that I do not subscribe to omniderigent theory; everyone knows that. The point is that, contrary to the assertion, omniderigent beliefs are commonplace among modern Christians, quite possibly more common than proper Calvinist theology.

Newspapers must improve their credibility with readers to catch rogue reporters like Jayson Blair if they fabricate stories, a former New York Times editor said Saturday. Readers assume what they read in the paper is often inaccurate, so they do not bother to alert newspapers when they know something is false, said Gerald Boyd, the former Times managing editor who resigned last year in the wake of the scandal caused by Blair’s falsified and plagiarized stories. It used to be that “if the Times got anything wrong, even a middle initial … I heard from people,” Boyd told editors at the Virginia Press Association winter meeting. “The fact that people don’t respond (to inaccurate stories) speaks to the state of journalism.”

Of course they don’t. I can usually find several major errors of fact in any story relating to economic matters in the New York Times, or most major newspapers for that matter. And then, there’s the “could lead to…” lead-in on stories about anything the paper doesn’t like, and it never seems to bother the paper that its predictions of this sort are never correct. It’s certainly an interesting approach to business, assuming that your readers are not only stupid, but ignorant with no long-term memory to boot.

Pfc. Jessica Lynch long ago laid to rest the claim that she fought until her ammunition ran out in an Iraqi ambush one year ago. But the U.S. Army will posthumously award a Silver Star medal for distinguished gallantry to an Oregon soldier who did fight during the ambush. And his family believes he was the source of the reports of a soldier who fought to the last. Sgt. Donald Walters of Salem was killed in the ambush of the 507th Army Maintenance Company that left 11 American soldiers dead and six captive, including Lynch. Walters, 33, may have been the first casualty in the March 23, 2003 firefight.

It was hardly Jessica Lynch’s fault that the feminists in the Pentagon attempted to use her to further their agenda to destroy the American military by feminizing it. I just felt sorry for her, but was disgusted to see the spin doctors try to rob Sgt. Walters of the honor that was due him. I doubted the Lynch story from the beginning, having once written a short story about the deification of an all-female US military unit that is hailed as the American Amazons until they are routed, leaving their wounded behind to be dragged through the streets. Fighting to the last is simply not, understandably enough, a female trait. You need a lot of testosterone to do anything that bravely and stubbornly heroic, which is no doubt one reason why 19 year-old soldiers are preferred to 40 year-olds.

Anyhow, I’m glad the Army finally saw fit to give Sgt. Walters his due. May he rest in peace and honor.

A new Linux distro. I can hear the tank drivers moaning – not another one! But the truth of the matter is that none of the existing distros are focused on what, to many, is one of the most important aspects to computers, namely, games. After some discussion on Linux World and Slashdot, I’ve decided to get involved with GBLD.net, which is not a gay-bisexual-lesbian-deviant forum, but rather shorthand for the Games-Based Linux Distribution. As one of the project goals is to produce an original, Linux-based game, I’ve decided to return to the world of game design by heading up the Game Team. I know some of you here are gamers, so below is a message I posted on the forums. Please feel free to get involved if you’re so inclined, and keep in mind that unlike most such projects, we aren’t starting from scratch as I have access to a fair bit of game code and game art that will serve as a nice starting point.

————–

I’d like to lay out what I feel are the primary needs of the Game Team. I’m interested in hearing from those interested in joining the team; my email is vday@worldnetdaily.com, please put GAME TEAM in the subject header.

The three most important GT needs – aside from the Lead Programmer who will report to Ian, not me – are a producer, a designer and an art director. While I can and have performed the first two roles in the past, I will be focusing solely on design responsibilities.

Interested individuals wanting to join the GT but not wishing to fill one of the three aforementioned roles should send me information pertaining to the following:

Group: Programming, Art, Sound & Story



Experience: none is absolutely necessary, except for the lead responsibilities. I’m hoping to assign an assistant, perhaps two, to each Group leader in order to provide experience to newcomers. But if you’ve got some related to the activity of your Group, let me know what it is.

Hours per month: how many are you willing and able to contribute? This is something we’re doing for fun, but everyone joining the team will be held accountable for completing the tasks assigned. Since many people are interested in contributing to this project, I will not hesitate to replace anyone who consistently fails to perform their responsibilities. If you’re just interested in shooting the breeze and talking about your ideas, feel free to post away in the forum.

Strange Semantics wrote: I think Canada and Europe are great examples, as for the most part their economies are doing as well as the U.S.’s on a relative scale, and theirs are much more socialized societies than ours

Stephen Roach, on the other hand, wrote today: I can’t get Europe out of my mind. Most of my international travel in early 2004 has been spent hopping back and forth across The Pond to the UK and the Continent. In a series of four such visits in the first ten weeks of this year, I have met with a broad cross-section of European investors, corporate executives, and government officials. I’ve never seen Europe in such bad shape…. Europe was the exception to this otherwise synchronous outbreak of resurgent global growth, with real GDP growth falling slightly short of 1.5% in the second half of 2003. And that was before the full force of the lagged impacts of the strengthening euro kicked in. Europe’s failure to participate in the latest global upswing only adds insult to injury. Something is seriously wrong in Europe, and the Europeans know it.

I salute Strange Semantic’s willingness to take me on directly. But, as Stephen Roach is Chief Economist and Director of Global Economic Analysis at Morgan Stanley as well as a former Fed researcher, I submit that this is more evidence that SS has almost no idea what he is talking about when it comes to economics, and consequently, political philosophy.

The axiomatic Austrian approach is the only economic school that offers a solid diagnosis for what is happening in the economies of the world today. Even Keynes admitted that in the long run, his economic models disintegrated. Keynes may be dead now, but we are not and the long run, she is a-coming.

WFB writes: Looking back on Bush vs. Gore, Professor Joseph Olson of the Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, gives us a shrewd perspective. Adding up the counties in the U.S. won by the two candidates, it was Gore 677, Bush 2,434. Taking the population of those counties, it was 143 million for Bush, 127 million for Gore. In square miles of land won, Gore 580,000, Bush 2,427,000. The murder rate in Gore counties, 13.2 per 100,000 residents, contrasted with 2.1 in the Bush counties.

That sounds a lot like the bogus Macalester professor, (another St. Paul university, btw), who couldn’t remember that there are 48 states, not 50. Which is too bad, since I agreed with the conclusion of the immediately previous paragraph: Democracy just doesn’t work, much of the time.

So let me get this straight. According to a pillar of the Republican party, we’re killing people and sacrificing our young soldiers for something that doesn’t work most of the time? That sounds a lot like someone stumbling gradually towards my critique of our Commander-in-Chief’s martial performance.

UPDATE: The Original Cyberpunk adds: Professor Joseph Olson is real, I’ve met him many times, and yes, this story is completely bogus. Still, no matter how many times he denies it, it keeps coming back; sometimes saying he teaches law at Hamline (which he does), other times putting him on the faculty at Macalester, William Mitchell, or some other college he’s never taught at. Sometimes breaking it out by counties; sometimes by either 48 or 50 states. But it all cases this story is false, the stats are wrong, and you’d be well-advised not to repeat it because it is so easily, provably bogus.

Oh, how are the mighty fallen!

One of our friendly Sovereigntists mentioned a while back that he didn’t know of anyone who believed in an omniderigent deity. It struck my attention, therefore, when the young Christian girl who lost her arm in a shark attack mentioned in USA Today that she believed her injury was God’s plan, implying that God sent the shark to bite her. My point is not to again reopen the argument or to say that the Sovereignty theory suffers due to its adherents being young surfer girls, but merely to draw attention to the fact that omniderigence is indeed a common notion among non-theologians.