Why Tebow matters

It’s because he understands that the real game that matters isn’t on the football field. After the upset playoff victory over the Steelers, Rick Reilly confesses that despite his initial doubts, he has become a believer:

Remember last week, when the world was pulling its hair out in the hour after Tebow had stunned the Pittsburgh Steelers with an 80-yard OT touchdown pass to Demaryius Thomas in the playoffs? And Twitter was exploding with 9,420 tweets about Tebow per second? When an ESPN poll was naming him the most popular athlete in America?

Tebow was spending that hour talking to 16-year-old Bailey Knaub about her 73 surgeries so far and what TV shows she likes.

“Here he’d just played the game of his life,” recalls Bailey’s mother, Kathy, of Loveland, Colo., “and the first thing he does after his press conference is come find Bailey and ask, ‘Did you get anything to eat?’ He acted like what he’d just done wasn’t anything, like it was all about Bailey.”

More than that, Tebow kept corralling people into the room for Bailey to meet. Hey, Demaryius, come in here a minute. Hey, Mr. Elway. Hey, Coach Fox. Even though sometimes-fatal Wegener’s granulomatosis has left Bailey with only one lung, the attention took her breath away.

“It was the best day of my life,” she emailed. “It was a bright star among very gloomy and difficult days. Tim Tebow gave me the greatest gift I could ever imagine. He gave me the strength for the future. I know now that I can face any obstacle placed in front of me. Tim taught me to never give up because at the end of the day, today might seem bleak but it can’t rain forever and tomorrow is a new day, with new promises.”

I read that email to Tebow, and he was honestly floored….

For the game at Buffalo, it was Charlottesville, Va., blue-chip high school QB Jacob Rainey, who lost his leg after a freak tackle in a scrimmage. Tebow threw three interceptions in that Buffalo game and the Broncos were crushed 40-14.

“He walked in and took a big sigh and said, ‘Well, that didn’t go as planned,'” Rainey remembers. “Where I’m from, people wonder how sincere and genuine he is. But I think he’s the most genuine person I’ve ever met.”

There’s not an ounce of artifice or phoniness or Hollywood in this kid Tebow, and I’ve looked everywhere for it.

How can you not admire that equanimity? “Well, that didn’t go as planned.” The fascinating thing about Tebow, the polarizing thing about Tebow, is that in much the same way as Jesus Christ, the radiance of his actions shines a light upon us and forces us to look ourselves and our own actions in comparison. And we react in different ways. We can be inspired and attempt to go forth and do likewise, we can simply admire him while remaining personally unmoved, or we can react with hatred and anger for the way in which he causes us to lose righteousness in our own eyes.

Tebow matters because our instinctive response to him tells us, and others, an awful lot about our hidden inner characters.

This is why a mere backup quarterback for the New York Jets, not even worthy of so much as a third-round draft pick, commands such attention. It is part of why a team with a chaotic coach and a dysfunctional locker room brought him on board. And whether he replaces the Sanchize for three Wildcat plays a game or as the starter, who isn’t looking forward to the upcoming season, where the success or failure of Peyton Manning in Denver will tell us a lot about whether it was the Denver defense that should have gotten the credit for the Broncos’ unexpected playoff run.

Speaking of Peyton Manning, Peter King provides a detailed chronicle of his decision-making process, which is fascinating in light of his otherwise inexplicable choice of Denver over a stronger San Francisco team.

The real persecution today

Remember that some atheists are treating Christians and others deemed “irredeemables” in this manner today, right now, as their co-godless in the West whine that religion is somehow oppressing them:

His first memory is an execution. He walked with his mother to a wheat field, where guards had rounded up several thousand prisoners. The boy crawled between legs to the front row, where he saw guards tying a man to a wooden pole….

The South Korean government estimates there are about 154,000 prisoners in North Korea’s labour camps, while the US state department puts the number as high as 200,000. The biggest is 31 miles long and 25 miles wide, an area larger than the city of Los Angeles. Numbers 15 and 18 have re-education zones where detainees receive remedial instruction in the teachings of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, and are sometimes released. The remaining camps are “complete control districts” where “irredeemables” are worked to death.

It’s an incredible story. It is arguably the most horrific situation on the planet today. And yet, none of the “Never Again” crowd appears to give even the slightest damn about what is happening in the Hermit Kingdom; they’re too busy worrying about the persecution inherent in a Christmas greeting.

As for Christians, this is what real persecution looks like. The martyrs of North Korea have stubbornly held to the faith for decades despite it. How many of us could do so? The Cambridge Medieval History reminds us:

In the middle of the third century the Emperor and the Empire learnt to dread this organised force within their midst. The despised “third race” had become indeed a nation within the Empire. The first impulse was to exterminate what seemed to be a source of danger. One well-organised universal persecution followed another. From each Christianity emerged with sadly diminished numbers (for the lapsed were always a larger body than the martyrs), but with spirit unbroken and with organisation intact and usually strengthened.

The Church will always survive. But note that the lapsed always outnumber the martyrs. So when you pray for the persecuted of North Korea, remember both the fallen and the fallen away.

Working mothers harm children

Working mothers are quite literally damaging their children by chucking them into childcare rather than raising them:

The study, being presented today at the Royal Economic Society’s annual conference, suggests that childcare leads to a substantial drop-off in parents’ involvement in their children’s upbringing. The damaging effects are most marked for boys and for youngsters aged from birth to two, prompting the researchers to suggest that childcare may not ‘be suited for children aged zero to two’.

Children were assigned a series of scores for their development and behaviour, based on the results of assessments and questionnaires. Childcare was found to significantly improve development for disadvantaged children. But the ‘lion’s share of the population experienced significant declines in motor-social development and health measures as well as increased behavioural problems’, the study found.

In other words, unless you’re a dysfunctional single mother who spends her days living off the state, doing drugs, and entertaining thugs, in which case the minimal childcare provided by indifferent minimum-wage workers is actually an improvement, your kids will be worse off.

The tragic thing is that most of these absentee mothers historically did not work and the main reason they are working now is in order to provide what they imagine will be to their children’s advantage. But what is the point of being able to afford an extra car or give your child a computer and a smartphone if you’re going to handicap him with “significant declines in motor-social development and health” from an early age?

Throw in the reduced wages produced by the entry of middle class women into the labor force and the 30 percent increase in female labor force participation from 1950 to 2010 and it’s not hard to understand why the USA is now facing a perfect storm of children’s issues combined with marital and familial problems.

NRO turns against the Afghan occupation

Are these cracks in the neocon dam or just a sign that their attention is turning to Iran and/or Syria?

Today, in another war – as Mark noted — there’s been a spate of Afghan “friendlies” assassinating American and U.N. troops in the wake of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’s alleged murder of 17 Afghan villagers while they slept. This comes on the heels of widespread rioting over the incineration of Korans, which were used by Taliban prisoners to pass messages — and for which the U.S. profusely apologized. Restrictive rules of engagement hamper our troops even as a group of foolish senators – all of them irrelevant to today’s politics — proclaim the fight worth continuing.

This is not a Good War.

In other words, I’m with Andy: It’s time to wrap up this decade-long farce, time for both civilian leaders and military brass to take a long, hard look at the demoralizing mess we’ve made in Afghanistan, and to ask how America can avoid such mistakes in the future.

We might start by forgetting the concept of “nation-building” in places where there are no nations to build. The nation-state, it should be remembered, is very much a Western concept, forged over 1,000 years of often painful European history.

Of course, it is as foolish to believe that non-Western barbarians are going to magically be transformed into civilized Westerners by virtue of physical residence in the West as it is to think that barbarian societies will be magically transformed into Western civilizations by virtue of military occupation.

But since it’s taken 11 years for these brilliant commentators to recognize the obvious in Afghanistan, we probably shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for them to do the same in America.

Chains of stars and science

Most humanists completely fail to understand that the current scientific hypotheses that free will does not exist are not a conceptual step forward, but rather a giant leap backward to the fifth century AD. This can be seen in David Boorstin’s explanation of the importance of the Christian concept of free will in The Discoverers:

The popular claims of pagan astrologers disturbed the early prophets of Christianity. Church Fathers who declared their own power to forecast everyman’s fate in the next world begrudged the powers of prophecy to those who pretended to know any man’s destiny on earth. If the astrologers’ horoscopes meant what they said, where was the room for free will, for freedom to choose good over evil, to forsake Mammon or Caesar for Jesus Christ?

The very struggle to become a Christian—to abandon pagan superstition for Christian free will—seemed to be a struggle against astrology. Saint Augustine (354–430) recalls in his Confessions: “Those impostors then, whom they style Mathematicians, I consulted without scruple; because they seemed to use no sacrifice, nor to pray to any spirit for their divinations. ‘ And he was tempted by the astrologers’ counsel: “The cause of thy sin is inevitably determined in heaven; this did Venus, or Saturn, or Mars: That man, forsooth, flesh and blood, and proud corruption, might be blameless; while the Creator and Ordainer of heaven and the stars is to bear the blame.”

Astrology remained the bête noire of the Christian Church Fathers. Faith in a star-written destiny had dissuaded Romans, such as Emperor Tiberius, from paying homage even to their pagan gods. Tertullian (c. 160–c. 230) warned against astrology because “men, presuming that we are disposed of by the immutable arbitrament of the stars, think on that account that God is not to be sought after.”
– The Discoverers, Chapter 3, “God and the Astrologers”

Here we see the link between a variety of belief systems that are united in one object, in their opposition to free will. Astrology, secular humanism, rational materialism, Islam, and even Calvinism are all opposed to what is ultimately the core basis of Christianity, which is the free and voluntary decision to submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ.

I find it both ironic and telling that Calvinists and a collection of cutting-edge atheist scientists are united in claiming that Man has no ability to choose to worship God. For is it not the Adversary who claims that Man is a helpless prisoner of fate and Jesus Christ who declares that he came to set Man free?

The astrologers blamed the Creator instead of the individual. The scientists blame – well, their theories aren’t formulated yet and are still self-contradictory and incoherent – a variety of things. The Calvinists follow, to varying degrees depending upon the Calvinist, the astrological lead in assigning blame to the Ordainer of heaven and the stars rather than the individual. It isn’t necessary to resort to the fallacy of guilt by association to question the way in which so much Calvinistic thinking tends to harmonize so comfortably with that of atheists and pagan astrologers.

I readily grant that St. Augustine is usually cited on the Calvinist side of the debate and that John Calvin derived many of his doctrinal positions from Augustine. It is worth remembering, then, that Augustine had previously found the astrological arguments to be persuasive.

Who needs economists?

Just ask the bookies:

In a candid admission to MPs, Professor Steve Nickell said he turned to the betting shop to find out whether Euro is likely to fail in the course of his work at the Office of Budget Responsibility.

Professor Nickell is one of the independent experts brought in by George Osborne, the Chancellor, to make sure Britain’s economic estimates are robust. Asked whether he thought the euro was likely to fail, he told the Treasury Select Committee the department itself did not “attach probabilities”.

“I go and look at William Hill and they actually have the odds of these sorts of things,” he said. “Last time I looked, the odds of Greece not using the euro by the end of the year were of the order of 40 per cent.”

This reminds me of the time that I talked with an acquaintance about a meeting he’d had the day before in London. He was lamenting the sheer idiocy of the men with whom he had been meeting and I was a little shocked when he happened to mention that he’d been meeting with the Bank of England. Totally confidence inspiring.

Housing can’t bounce back

Zerohedge on what would be student loan defaults, if students could still default on loans:

Back in late 2006 and early 2007 a few (soon to be very rich) people were warning anyone who cared to listen, about what cracks in the subprime facade meant for the housing sector and the credit bubble in general. They were largely ignored as none other than the Fed chairman promised that all is fine (see here). A few months later New Century collapsed and the rest is history: tens of trillions later we are still picking up the pieces and housing continues to collapse. Yet one bubble which the Federal Government managed to blow in the meantime to staggering proportions in virtually no time, for no other reason than to give the impression of consumer releveraging, was the student debt bubble, which at last check just surpassed $1 trillion, and is growing at $40-50 billion each month. However, just like subprime, the first cracks have now appeared. In a report set to convince borrowers that Student Loan ABS are still safe – of course they are – they are backed by all taxpayers after all in the form of the Family Federal Education Program – Fitch discloses something rather troubling, namely that of the $1 trillion + in student debt outstanding, “as many as 27% of all student loan borrowers are more than 30 days past due.” In other words at least $270 billion in student loans are no longer current (extrapolating the delinquency rate into the total loans outstanding). That this is happening with interest rates at record lows is quite stunning and a loud wake up call that it is not rates that determine affordability and sustainability: it is general economic conditions, deplorable as they may be, which have made the popping of the student loan bubble inevitable.

The inability of students to default on student loans has bought the financial system a little more time, perhaps a year or two, but as is always the case with economics, the negative consequences can only be delayed, they cannot be put off indefinitely.

There are two very big problems here. The first is that the inability to write off these delinquent loans means that the banks are adding to their already large pool of fictitious paper assets. The second is that these hopelessly indebted students are never going to become homeowners, thus reducing the demand for housing and thereby adding to the forces causing housing prices to decline. This further adds to the fictitious paper assets of the banks, which already stands around 40 percent.

In other words, the presently perceived inflation rests on tremendously precarious grounds. We have reached the point where we now have a Potemkin money supply, even if we have not yet reached the level of the Soviet absurdity where the workers pretend to work and the government pretends to pay them.

WND column

Hispanic kills black, whites to blame

The overwrought response of America’s blacks to the shooting death of one Trayvon Martin has been illuminating, indeed. What it demonstrates is that what passes for black political leadership has absolutely no intention of giving up the race card until the last individual of European descent has disappeared into the multiracial melting pot that is pushed so assiduously upon the American public by the mainstream media. And the media response to their usual histrionics indicates that these intentions are entirely irrelevant.

Chess mastery

I’ve never been much of a chess player, which may seem strange considering that I’m a reasonably formidable ASL player. I suspect it has to do with the spatial relations aspect of the game; the ability to quickly adapt and improvise is less important than the ability to accurately foresee the chain of consequences from each move.

Anyhow, Ender has a new Star Wars chess set that doubles as toy X-wing and TIE fighter squadrons and we’ve been playing a game every night. He’s improving fast; last night he managed to take the offensive twice and stretched the game out twice as long as they’d previously been taking. My guess is that within a month, he’ll be beating me on occasion and within a year, he’ll be expecting to win. I taught him how to play several years ago, but he didn’t express any real interest in playing it until last week.

Anyhow, I’m curious to know if there is anyone here who plays in tournaments and has a legitimate Elo rating. I’d be interested in determining what level I’m at for comparative purposes. I tried one of the online calculators, but I’m extremely skeptical of the estimates produced. I scored a 1380 when I put in my moves, but putting in complete nonsense moves produced an 1120. If it’s correct, however, I expect to soon find myself outmatched, as Ender scored 1645, which considerably exceeds the 1,000 that Wikipedia claims is the level of a bright beginner.

Anyhow, for those who aren’t chess masters, it might be interesting to know how you scored on the ten-move online test. And for anyone who is a master, I’d be interested in playing a game of chess by email in order to experience the difference between a proper chess player and a neophyte.