I get thoughts on occasion. Like yesterday, as I was reading Mark 6, something popped into my head. I'm still toying with it; perhaps I'll write an article.

There is a tendency in the church to regard all ethical standards as unchanging absolutes. Almost goes without saying. The idea that there could be a progressive quality to it strikes most as absurd. But in Mark 6:7ff Jesus sends his disciples out to preach the gospel and heal the sick and gives them instructions on how they should conduct themselves. Later, in Luke 22:35ff when he sends them out again, he gives them different instructions for when they go out. The purposes and needs have shifted. We recognize, as theologians, the progressive nature of God’s revelation to his people, but somehow imagine that this is not the case with ethics, or that progressive development ceased with the appearance of the closed biblical canon.

But perhaps a consideration of Jesus’ changing instructions to his disciples gives us a principle for the interpretation of morals and biblical injunctions: they may sometimes be more circumstantial in their implementation than many might think. Or be comfortable with. Circumcision seems clearly an eternal command in the Old Testament, impossible to ignore or do without. And yet Paul dismisses it entirely for in the NT without qualms. More than that, he actively argues against it—-despite the clear-cut biblical commands to the contrary, and despite the severe criticism he faced for his position from traditional Judaism and even from many within the Christian sect. Likewise, Christians (including Paul and Peter) jettisoned the kosher laws regarding what could be eaten. Peter’s vision of the animals let down in a sheet contributed to a shift, despite clear cut biblical commands to the contrary; the Jerusalem Council’s letter (as recorded in Acts) makes it clear that the church very early decided that the dietary regulations no longer needed to be enforced.

So, it appears that simply because some may think that certain biblical commands or injunctions are eternal truths does not necessarily mean that they actually are. The principles of grace and love are ever important, more than the strictures of the law. Jesus points out that the law comes down to just two commands, to love God and love people; these remain the guiding principles in morality, rather than the detailed lists that appear within the sacred texts. Consider the story of the woman caught in adultery and Jesus’ consistent violation of Sabbath restrictions: mercy, love, justice take precedence over any legalistic following of the biblical laws.

No one has a problem recognizing that certain injunctions in the Bible are contextually specific, rather than universal, eternal commands. For instance when Jesus tells Peter to pay the temple tax by going fishing, I know of no one who imagines that Jesus has given Peter an eternal command that tells us we are going to be instructed in how to pay our taxes today. Perhaps the same is true of other legalistic formulations as well?

The Bible is not a frozen thing. From it, we can alter and adjust our understanding of ethics to fit new circumstances, not remain hidebound in stasis. The temptation, of course, for some will be to use such a realization to rationalize selfish and unloving behavior. If you imagine that now, based on this idea, you can justify taking an axe to your annoying neighbor, then you're missing the point. Perhaps revisiting the central theme of love, mercy, grace would be useful in considering behavior. But that central theme must, I believe, have a role in making sense of how we interpret the bilical texts.

I signed up for a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) phone service a couple of days ago and set it all up late this afternoon. The setup was easy and everything worked right the first time. It seems to work well, at least so far: good voice quality and no issues of any sort. It seems, frankly, indistinguishable from our old phone company. The big plus in all of this for me is that our phone bill (combined local and long distance) now drops to nearly a third of what the old phone bill was monthly, from about 100 dollars per month down to 35, and that's with having a separate fax line! And we now have unlimited minutes; we can call anywhere in the US and Canada for as long as we like for that flat rate of 35 bucks a month. I like it!

An interesting review of the book Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror by Mary Habeck, published by Yale University Press (243 pp. $25). Mary Habeck is a military historian and associate professor in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Here's an excerpt from the review by Tim Rutten from the Los Angeles Times:

Habeck contends that Western analysts err when they insist on attributing the rise of jihadism to secular causes — economic deprivation of the Muslim masses, the legacy of European imperialism, American sympathy for the state of Israel. Taking the 9/11 terrorists as her examples, she convincingly argues that they did what they did because of what they believed as Muslims:

"Muhammad Atta and the other 18 men who took part in the September 11 attacks were middle-class and well-educated and had bright futures ahead of them," she writes. "They participated in the hijackings not because they were forced to do so through sudden economic or social deprivation, but because they chose to deal with the problems of their community — for religious/ideological reasons — by killing as many Americans as they could." Similarly, "If the entire purpose of jihadism is to break an imperial stranglehold on the Islamic world symbolized by U.S. support for Israel, why did the U.S. become the focus of [jihadi theorist] Sayyid Qutb's anger in the early 1950s (more than a decade before the United States became associated with Israel)? Moreover, how do the effects of colonization account for the fact that one of the earliest jihadist thinkers, Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, developed his version of radical and violent Islam long before the West colonized Islamic lands? … The consistent need to find explanations other than religious ones for the attacks says, in fact, more about the West than it does about the jihadis. Western scholars have generally failed to take religion seriously."

(It's worth recalling that Wahhab's interpretation of Islam is Saudi Arabia's official orthodoxy and that Riyadh's petrodollars are financing its missionary work around the world at this very moment.)

Because Habeck is deadly serious about the jihadis' religiosity, she is scrupulous about their relationship to contemporary Islam. It would be "evil," she argues, to contend that a billion-plus Muslims supported or desired the mass murder that occurred on 9/11. Nor is it correct to conflate jihadi ideology with Islamist politics, such as those of Turkey's Justice and Development Party. On the other hand, she writes, it "would be just as wrong to conclude that the hijackers, Al Qaeda and the other radical groups have nothing to do with Islam."

Nor can the jihadis' key beliefs be dismissed as "the marginal opinions of a few fanatics. The principal dogmas that they assert … have roots in discussions about Islamic law and theology that began soon after the death of Muhammad and that are supported by important segments of the clergy today."

Here an American reader confronts the necessity of reaching beyond the undergraduate impulse that equates a facile acceptance with tolerance. It's a step that requires the recognition, as the philosopher Richard Rorty once put it, that some ideas, like some people, are just "no damn good."

Habeck does an efficient job of demonstrating how the jihadis pick and choose texts from the Koran and the hadith (traditions concerning the life of the prophet) and insist on their right to interpret them for their ideological convenience. The texts and traditions, however, are there to pick.

She locates the origins of contemporary jihadism first in the writings of Wahhab and the 13th century Koranic commentator Ahmad ibn Abd al Halim ibn Taymiyya. Then came the crucial contributions of the 20th century Egyptians Hasan Banna — founder of the Muslim Brotherhood — and Qutb, who lived for a time in the United States, as well as a Pakistani, Sayyid abu al-ala Mawdudi.

Banna contributed the notion that every aspect of Western thought was as much a threat to Islam as any imperial occupation. Mawdudi argued that since God's sovereignty is absolute, no law but that of Islam is valid. Qutb held, among other things, that Muslims who do not conform to the jihadi interpretations of the Koran are unbelievers, which makes it permissible to kill them at will, and that the whole notion of separating church and state in any way was "hideous schizophrenia."

The entire review is available on the LA Times website.

Diplomacy is described sometimes as saying "nice doggy" while you look around for a rock.

Sometimes when I hear the President or other administration officials describe Islam as a "religion of peace" and other politically correct nice-nice, I think about that description and wonder if it's not just their way of saying "nice doggy."

Twenty years ago today the Challenger was destroyed shortly after lift off. I remember it vividly; I was just pulling into the parking lot at Los Angeles Baptist College, where I expected to teach my morning class on the Minor Prophets. I was listening to coverage of the launch on KNX, the local all-news station here in Southern California.

It was a devastating feeling. I told my class, then I went through the motions of the lecture; afterward, I went to the student lounge and watched coverage of the disaster on the TV there; quite a number of students and other faculty were there.

That evening, I tried to console myself by watching some science fiction movies; the one I remember was the movie 2010: Odyssey Two. Not the greatest movie, but I found comfort in the thought that our quest for space would surely continue.

Thankfully it has, even after the loss of a second shuttle, Columbia, in 2003.

Here in the Antelope Valley, they renamed 10th Street East Challenger Way. Last year they renamed Avenue M Columbia Way. Given that all the orbiters were built here, that seems appropriate.

It is useful to keep in mind that when Hamas speaks of "the occupation" of Palestine, they are not referring to just the West Bank and Gaza. They mean all of Israel. Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, has labelled the Jewish state as a "tumour" that should be "wiped off the map" or moved as far away as Alaska, and has branded the Holocaust a "myth".

Iran and Hamas are allies and declared in December that they represented a "united front" against Israel. Today, Memri.org reported the following translations of statements by leaders of Hamas:

Special Dispatch - Palestinians
January 27, 2006
No. 1079

Hamas in Run-up to Elections: Relatively Pragmatic Statements Alongside Extremist Statements

To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD107906 .

TO VIEW CLIPS ON HAMAS, VISIT: http://www.memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S5&P1=151 .

In the run-up to the Palestinian elections, Hamas members in the Palestinian Authority began to make relatively pragmatic statements, while continuing to make extremist statements. According to media reports, Hamas has retained a media consultant to improve the movement's image - though Hamas claims that the consultant was hired to provide technical advice on enhancing contacts with the media(1). It should be noted that the relatively pragmatic statements were made by Hamas members involved in the elections, and not by the movement's central leaders, who live abroad. These leaders, in particular political bureau head Khaled Mash'al, emphasize continued resistance alongside "diplomatic activity," and state that there is no contradiction between the two.

The following are excerpts from statements by Hamas members:


Establishing a Palestinian State Within the 1967 Borders as an Interim Solution

Isma'il Haniyya, who headed the Hamas list of candidates for the Legislative Council, said in an interview with the French news agency AFP that "Hamas supports the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital in the territories occupied [by Israel] in 1967 - as an interim solution. However, Hamas will continue to maintain its views regarding the boundaries of historical Palestine, and [in terms of] refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the occupation."(2)

In an interview with the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dr. Mahmoud Al-Rumhi, a candidate on the Hamas list, explained: "Hamas is aware of the changes that have occurred in the region and in the world, and is therefore proposing an interim solution. This solution is not new. I first mentioned it in 1988, and referred to it again in the 90s. The shahid Sheikh Ahmad Yassin repeated these statements in 2002 and 2003, and announced that [Hamas] is willing to accept an interim solution based on the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital in the territories that were occupied in 1967, removal of the settlements, and return of the refugees - all this in return for a hudna [truce] of limited duration. This does not stand in contradiction to [the fact that] we have a strategic position..."(3)

Another candidate on the Hamas list, Ahmad Bahr, repeated at a Gaza election rally that "Hamas is willing to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders as an interim solution, but without giving up a single grain of Palestinian soil, without recognizing the State of Israel, and on condition that Hamas retain the right to possess arms."(4)


Hamas Election Platform Does Not Include Eradication of Israel

The Hamas election platform includes a declaration of intent to "eliminate the occupation," but does not mention the eradication of Israel. Upon the publication of the platform, there were various reactions to the omission of this objective, which is often mentioned by Hamas and appears in its charter. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri vehemently denied that there was any contradiction between the platform and Hamas's charter: "The platform refers to details and implementation methods for the next four years, while the charter lays out our permanent strategic views."

Salah Al-Bardawil, another candidate on the Hamas list, stated that "Hamas has never proposed to change or amend its charter. The platform presents a realistic view that reflects Hamas's goals for the next four years. Had we spoken of eliminating and eradicating Israel within this period, we would have been be deceiving our people and repeating false slogans. But this does not stand in contradiction [to the fact that] we place emphasis on the elimination and non-recognition of Israel."(5)

Muaman Bseiso, columnist for the Hamas weekly Al-Risala, wrote: "The charter is not the Koran, which is unchangeable. I believe that one day it will be changed or replaced according to the views of the Hamas, in order to realize the national interests of the Palestinians."(6)


On Negotiating With Israel

Hamas candidate for the Jerusalem area Muhammad Abu Teir said, "Negotiations [with Israel] conducted by Hamas would be more effective than the negotiations that have been held for the past 10 years without achieving anything."(7) On the following day, Abu Teir denied having made this statement.

Dr. Mahmoud Al-Rumhi said that "a distinction must be made between negotiations with the occupation towards a political [settlement], and day-to-day contacts regarding services [for the population]. For example, after Hamas won [the municipal elections] in Qalqiliya, it naturally had dealings with the municipality of [the Israeli town of] Kfar Saba regarding water, electricity and sewage [management]."(8)

However, in an interview on Al-Jazeera TV aired January 23, 2006, Khaled Mash'al stated that Hamas would not negotiate with Israel. Likewise, Isma'il Haniyya said: "Negotiations with Israel are not on the Hamas agenda, since past negotiations between Israel and the PA have been unsuccessful. Hamas will not repeat attempts that have [already] failed. [Moreover,] the stronger side always has an advantage in negotiations."(9)

In contrast, senior Hamas member Mahmoud Al-Zahar said at a press conference: "There is no prohibition on negotiating with Israel, but the political crime is to sit with the Israelis, exchange smiles, and say that there is progress, when in reality there is no progress... If Hamas wins [the elections], it will be able to come up with thousands of appropriate ways [to hold negotiations], provided that the Israeli side has anything to offer in terms of stopping the aggression, withdrawal [from territories], and release of prisoners." Al-Zahar mentioned as an example the indirect contacts between Israel and Hizbullah via German mediation regarding the release of Lebanese prisoners from Israeli jails. "Negotiations with Israel," he said, "have brought the Palestinians only destruction, martyrdom and injuries, in addition to economic disaster."(10)


Resistance is Hamas's Strategic Policy

Hamas spokesman Mushir Al-Masri said: "The resistance plan is Hamas's strategic policy until [we achieve] the complete liberation of our land... Hamas wants to reinforce the option of jihad and resistance in order to ensure the release of the prisoners, the return of the refugees, and the restoration of all the other rights that [the Palestinians] have been robbed of."(11)

At an assembly in Damascus, Khaled Mash'al said: "This assembly holds special significance, since it takes place after Gaza was liberated against the will of the Zionist aggressors. Who knows when we will celebrate the liberation of Gaza, Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, and all the rest of Palestine. Hamas, together with the Palestinian people, will implement its policy using a new language, without feeling any urge to meet with the enemy or negotiate with it. Was Gaza liberated through negotiations?! Hamas will continue to wield its weapons and to [claim] its right to resist. Resistance will [continue to] be a strategic option until the last piece of Palestinian land is liberated, and until the last refugee returns."(12)

Endnotes:
(1) Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), January 21, 2006.
(2) Al-Ayyam (Palestinian Authority), January 22, 2006.
(3) Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), January 19, 2006.
(4) Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), January 22, 2006.
(5) www.islamonline.org, January 14, 2006.
(6) www.islamonline.org, January 14, 2006.
(7) Al-Ayyam (PA), January 16, 2006.
(8) Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), January 19, 2006.
(9) Al-Ayyam (PA), January 22, 2006.
(10) Al-Ayyam (PA), January 24, 2006.
(11) Al-Risala (Gaza), January 16, 2006. On a different occasion, Mahmoud Al-Zahhar said that his movement "has no choice but to kidnap Israeli soldiers in order to negotiate their exchange with prisoners held in Israel." Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), January 19, 2006.
(12) www.irna.ir/ar/news/view/menu-269/0512314399085311.htm, December 31, 2005.



*********************
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Some people think we are unbalanced in our support of Israel versus the rest of the Arab world or the Palestinians. Odd, really. Where exactly do you stand to balance a free, democratic nation against totalitarian anti-semitic thugs who believe sending suicide bombers into discos is a fine foreign policy? To me, it would seem to be analagous to the stand I might take between the police and rapists. Sure, the police make mistakes sometimes, but that doesn't give me any warm feelings for rapists.

Critics of Israel seem to forget that Israel is a pluralistic liberal western democracy. Free press, lots of ideas and disagreements and discussions; wide range of beliefs. Freedom. Did I mention that? And certainly, Israelis make mistakes. And those Israelis who are guilty of attrocities, just as the members of the military who mistreated detainees at Abu Graib, have a habit of winding up in prison.

Hamas is equivalent to the Nazi party in Germany. In Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out his plans. The Nazis were quite open about their desires. And yet few believed them, except for Churchill and a few others, who were branded as extremists and roadblocks to peace until it was nearly too late.

Hamas tells us that they want to destroy the nation of Israel. They regularly kill Jews just because they are Jews. Their allies in Iran say that they want to wipe Israel out.

Me, I tend to believe that these people are telling us what they really think. And I have no reason to suspect that the Palestinian people who happily voted for these thugs have any doubts about what they intend either. It wasn't just corruption and a bad economy that made them vote as they did. They voted as they did because they hate the Jews and like the Nazis are happy to blame them for their own problems. Pardon me if I have no sympathy for a bunch of people who honor bombers who kill Jews and danced in the streets and celebrated on 911. Pardon me if I believe them when they tell everyone that they intend to destroy Israel and have no wish to negotiate, except as an "interum" step toward their ultimate goal of destruction.

Things that most people believe that simply are not true:

1. You can boil a frog to death if you heat the water very slowly. NOT TRUE.
2. You only use ten percent of your brain. NOT TRUE.
3. You have to wait a half hour after eating before going swimming. NOT TRUE.

As Snopes explains about such things:

Regardless of the exact version heard, the myth is spread and repeated, by both the well-meaning and the deliberately deceptive. The belief that remains, then, is what Robert J. Samuelson termed a "psycho-fact, [a] belief that, though not supported by hard evidence, is taken as real because its constant repetition changes the way we experience life." People who don't know any better will repeat it over and over, until, like the admonition against swimming right after you eat, the claim is widely believed. ("Triumph of the Psycho-Fact," Newsweek, 9 May 1994.)

There was an election in the Palestinian Territories. Hamas won. And what can we say about Hamas? It is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Just like al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists, it infuses nationalism with religious faith. What is their goal? The ethnic cleansing or the death of all Israelis, and the incorporation of their land into the new state of Palestine. Suicide bombing is one weapon they have used on a regular basis. Hamas leaders have already been quick to say that they will take their place in the legislative assembly and keep their weapons. Commentators patiently explain how corrupt the other politicians were in Gaza and the West Bank, and so the people wanted change, they wanted to get rid of corruption. That's what motivated the Palestinians to elect Hamas. They don't really buy in to all that Jew hatred and suicide bombing. It was just about the economy stupid! The economy in those places is so poor, of course the people were desperate and picked Hamas. But the election is over and now and the slogans will be only slogans, but they will have to moderate themselves since they need to focus on building roads and hospitals and collecting the garbage and they'll have to compromise and work for a peaceful solution.

No. It is 1932 and the Nazis have come to power. Hamas is a terrorist organization; they preach hatred against the Jews and use the same arguments that the Nazis did. They do not believe in compromise. They belive in sending youths to blow themselves up in the hopes of killing Jewish women and children. And they will no more moderate themselves than the Nazis did when they gained the chancellorship of Germany. The Palestinian people do not want peace. They want war. They just voted for it. And war there shall be. Bet on it.

And for the ethically challenged who live among us, a reminder of what actual repression and actual torture are can be seen on video available at The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Not for the faint of heart.

Occasional forays to MEMRI.org can also help remind people what's really going on in the world, too--for instance, if you ever have the thought that the terrorist organization Hamas might be moderated by participating in elections in the Palestinian territories (see moronic reports here and here). Um, yeah, just like the Nazi Party was moderated by participating in elections in Weimar Germany back in the 1930s. What part of "anti-Semites are dangerous" don't people get?

Ah, yes, hypocrisy, thy name is Google:

SAN FRANCISCO — Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country's free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet's fastest growing market.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company planned to roll out a new version of its search engine bearing China's Web suffix ".cn," on Wednesday....

Google's decision rankled Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog group that has sharply criticized Internet companies including Yahoo and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com for submitting to China's censorship regime.

"This is a real shame," said Julien Pain, head of Reporters with Borders' Internet desk. "When a search engine collaborates with the government like this, it makes it much easier for the Chinese government to control what is being said on the Internet."

Once again, we see how, for the sake of business, Google will bend over and take anything. Meanwhile, the US Govt is criticized for wanting to examine searches that are related to child pornography, while Google is praised for their brave stand against the attempted "oppression" and "dangerous infringement on privacy." But Google will happily restrict the access of Chinese people to whatever the Chinese government would prefer they not see, and they are happy to do the same thing for the governments of France and Germany.

When Google censors results in China, it intends to post notifications alerting users that some content has been removed — to comply with local laws. The company provides similar alerts in Germany and France when, to comply with national laws, it censors results to remove references to Nazi paraphernalia.

And yet I do not hear Belefonte and those like him raising a peep about this actual repression. Real censorship is of no great importance to him. Instead he prefers to believe in imaginary things, for instance that it is Americans that are repressed and facing the loss of all their freedoms. I wonder if Belefonte also believes in unicorns? Perhaps he'd be interested in buying a bridge in Brooklyn?...

You know, people like Harry Belafonte puzzle me. There are many like him. According to MSNBC.com he said:

“We’ve come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended,” Belafonte said in a speech to the annual meeting of the Arts Presenters Members Conference.

What puzzles me is that if what he said is true, then how is it that I know what he said? If this was the fascist, repressive state that he wants us to imagine, I don't understand how it could be that his words were reported in newspapers, TV, radio and the internet. If this is a fascist state, then how odd that he is sleeping peacefully in his bed with no fear that there will be a knock on his door at two in the morning. He probably ate in a fancy restaurant today, where he was treated with respect. I suspect he has no fear at all that he might wind up in a concentration camp, nor does he have to fear gas chambers. Doubtless, he will continue to be well-paid for what he does. And yet, despite the fact that he is free, can say and do and go wherever he likes, he will continue making these insane comments. And there will be many people who will agree with him, and will repeat his words, and like him, they will sleep peacefully, too, with no fear of harm.

Meanwhile, he and those like him, and those who applaud him, will continue to remain silent about the actual dictatorships in the world, they will ignore the nations that actually torture, who actually toss people in jail for speaking their minds, or worse, they will embrace fondly the brutal oppressors of the world and spout praise in their capitals while their artists, writers, and intellectuals are locked away, and where critics of the regime are actually killed or jailed.

But if someone dares disgree publically with Belafonte, or someone in the current US government says an unkind word about him, he'll shout that he's being silenced, even as thunderous applause floods over him from his next speaking engagement.

MSNBC.com reports that Google is rebuffing the US goverment's efforts to get data on what terms are searched:

SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. is rebuffing the Bush administration’s demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the Internet’s leading search engine — a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance.

It should be pointed out that the US government's request very specifically, excludes personally identifiable information. The same MSNBC.com article points out that:

...the government says it isn’t seeking any data that ties personal information to search requests...

So I can't see that any privacy issues are in view here. They just want the data about what is being searched for, because they wonder what the percentages are for searches for child pornography. They want to know how significant the problem is.

This doesn't seem like a bad thing.

But when the Chinese government asked Google to restrict searches in China and block sites that the Chinese government doesn't like--sites that are critical of Beijing--Google happily complied:

Google's recently launched news service in China doesn't display results from websites blocked by that country's authorities, raising prickly questions for an online search engine that has famously promised to "do no evil".

Dynamic Internet Technology, a research firm striving to defeat online censorship, conducted tests that found Google omits results from the government-banned sites if search requests are made through computers connecting to the internet in China.

Steered by an identical search request, computers with a United States connection retrieved results from the sites blocked by China.

"That's a problem because the Chinese people need to know there are alternative opinions from the Chinese government and there are many things being covered up by the government," said Bill Xia, Dynamic's chief executive. "Users expect Google to return anything on the internet. That's what a search engine does."

Mr Xia suspects Google is co-operating with the Chinese government's censorship efforts to smooth the way for expansion plans that could help the Mountain View-based company boost future profits.

Why is it that people will protest freely in our democracy, stand on "principle" but lose their principles when they are in a totalitarian dictatorship? Oh, yeah. dictatorships shoot people who protest. Google appears guilty of gross hypocrisy. They are not principled, they just know if they don't do what the Chinese government says, they'll lose that market; but if they don't do what the US government wants, they'll lose nothing. They aren't alone, of course. Microsoft took down a Chinese blog, and Yahoo turned over data that led to the conviction of a Chinese journalist. But I'm sure their principles would kick back in if the US government needed something.

The Washington Post, among other sources, reports the following words from the mayor of New Orleans:

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 16 -- Mayor C. Ray Nagin suggested Monday that hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that "God is mad at America" -- and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting.

"Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country," Nagin said as he and other city leaders marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Pat Robertson is not alone is being an asshole, apparently. But then the false theology of Job's friends, that bad things happen only to bad people, and that if you suffer, you must have deserved it, is a widely believed lie.

CNN reports that Pat Robertson apologized:

Evangelist Pat Robertson apologized in a Wednesday letter for saying that the major stroke suffered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was divine retribution for "dividing God's land."

The apology -- offered in a letter to Sharon's son, Omri -- followed a threat by Israel to exclude Robertson from a proposed $50 million Christian heritage site in northern Israel.

Of course, it took him until Wednesday on January 11 to say anything--after his spokespeople had initially come out to reinforce and argue in favor of his stupid remark--and then his apology arrives only in the face of Israel deciding that maybe doing business with a rude jerk is a bad idea. Frankly, his apology strikes me as little better than the babbling of a child caught with his hand in a cookie jar. Certainly the child is sorry--sorry he got caught. And the apology sounds more like an excuse than anything else, since he blames those who reported his remarks claiming that somehow they misconstrued what he meant. Hardly. Frankly, he remains a jerk and this apology doesn't much help his case, since he still believes that what he said was true. I don't see that his theology has shifted. I think he's just worried about losing money.

A "hyperspace" engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government. The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today's New Scientist magazine. They also report that a test engine could be online within five years.

See New Scientist for the article.

See here for a PDF of the actual scientific paper.

I am very skeptical of all of this; but it sure would be cool.

It is reported that Pat Robertson has once again opened his mouth. As is usually the case when this happens, he has reminded everyone that he is an asshole:

The Reverend Pat Robertson says Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's massive stroke could be God's punishment for giving up Israeli territory.

The founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network told viewers of "The 700 Club" that Sharon was "dividing God's land," even though the Bible says doing so invites "God's enmity."

Robertson added, "I would say woe to any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course."

He noted that former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.

Robertson said God's message is, "This land belongs to me. You'd better leave it alone."

Assuming this news report is an accurate portrayal of his words, I have to wonder once again why Robertson can't learn to keep his mouth closed. If God was really in the business of punishing people for being "bad" like Pat Robertson believes, well...what I'm thinking isn't very nice.

Hey Pat, here's a hint for you. When someone gets ill, or something bad happens, the proper response is simply, "we'll be praying for him/her and his/her family." Duh. Maybe if Robertson would just reread the book of Job and ask himself if it's really a good idea to keep acting just like Job's friends, he could avoid being a jackass all the time.

UPDATE:

Well, both CNN and MSNBC are reporting what Robertson said. And now his spokesperson had this to say:

Robertson spokeswoman Angell Watts said of critics who challenged his remarks, “What they’re basically saying is, ‘How dare Pat Robertson quote the Bible?”’

“This is what the word of God says,” Watts said. “This is nothing new to the Christian community.”

Um. No. This is not what the Bible says. Robertson is guilty of misquoting it and pulling things out of context. In point of fact, Robertson's position is unscriptural, in the sense that it stands opposed to what the Bible actually says. But his spokesperson is right: it's not new to the Christian community. We seem to have no lower percentage of assholes among us than the human race as a whole. Not too surprising, I guess. It's just too bad Roberson is one of those assholes, whose theology is that of Job's friends: stupid and wrong.

Space Daily is reporting:

SpaceX is now now hoping to make its first orbital flight on December 19, the first day of a three-day window sandwiched between a missile defense test and the Christmas holidays, following a scrubbed launch attempt on November 26.

Canon law preventing a priest from giving the police information so that they can rescue a boy being held by a child molester was a central plot point in last night’s Boston Legal. The priest in question refused to answer the police enquiries regarding a certain individual, claiming that he could not reveal what was said in confession. Of course, in real life, the church would not be so legalistic, I don’t think, and most priests would not be so nasty. But it worked as a fictional device, and it serves as a good illustration of legalism and how (as Christ’s points out) it gets in the way of doing what is right. Following the rules, he argues, sometimes means that you do the exactly wrong thing.

So is Christianity all about what I can’t do? Christians wonder, and those who are not Christians wonder for them, what is permitted and what is not permitted. Of course, this is like the question in the Hitchhiker’s Guide asked of Deep Thought: what is the meaning of life, the universe and everything? 42. And then Deep Thought points out that they are not asking the right question. Asking if Christianity is about what I can’t do, or asking about what is permitted and not permitted is the focus of most Christians through most of their lives, most of the time. It is the same thing that focuses the minds of the practioners of most faiths and even the minds of those who practice no faiths.

Unfortunately, the answer to that particular question is 42.

You see, it is the wrong question altogether, akin to asking about the nature of the ether, or the color of Unicorn blood. Those would both be the wrong question, given that the ether and Unicorns don’t exist. Perhaps a question more in keeping with, do they exist or not would get better traction.

So what is Christianity all about? Consider that Jesus told his disciples that all would know they were Christians by their love for one another. It wasn’t about their behavior, in avoiding certain “bad” things. Nor did it have anything to do with what they “believed”, another thing that is the focus of many Christians, once they get past the issue of what they can and cannot do; and of course that question tends to result in a lot of answers similar to 42 as well.

Our relationship with God is based on what he did on the cross, so perfection in our behavior and perfection in our beliefs have nothing to do with it. Jesus said that everything hinges on just two commands: to love God and to love people, and really, Paul and John seem to indicate that it mostly comes down to loving people, since that’s how love of God happens.

At the Garden of Eden incident, when Adam made a poor choice with the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it is important to notice that knowing good was as much a problem as knowing evil. When we ask the question, is this good or is this bad, we are already acting as fallen creatures. Ideally, as Bonhoeffer put it, we shouldn’t even think of such things: the right hand should not know what the left hand is doing. Our focus is ideally simply on Christ and acting or not acting; love is all that concerns us. And as Paul points out, love fulfills and sums up the law, because obviously, he says, if you love someone you want what’s best for them, and if you love them, you don’t hurt them. In loving someone, you avoid killing, stealing, and so on from them. Love fulfills all. If we focus on that, the rest takes care of itself and we’ll stop being puzzled by the number 42. We’ll finally have the right question, and then the answer is obvious.

Start saving your frequent flyer miles. Yahoo reports:

HONG KONG (AFP) - Virgin Airlines is to offer frequent-flyer "Space Miles" that passengers can put towards flights in space with the company's soon-to-be-launched Virgin Galactic, boss Richard Branson revealed.

The British tycoon, in Hong Kong to promote new Virgin flights to the city, said customers who collected two million points would be entitled to be among the first commercial astronauts when his space plan takes off in two years.

"There are already 30 people in the world who have collected enough air miles to fly into space," Branson said Tuesday.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the International Red Cross may have finally found a way to let Israel join:

The formal reason for the exclusion of MDA [Mogan David Adam, the Israeli version of the Red Cross] was based on the Geneva Convention prerequisite stating that the member organizations must adopt one of the "recognized symbols" of the international movement.

The Red Star of David was not one of these, and since 1949, when the issue was first raised, MDA was unwilling to operate under the Red Cross or Red Crescent, he said. Arab and Muslim countries prevented International Red Cross recognition of the Red Star of David alongside the other two.

In 2000, a compromise was reached in which the International Red Cross agreed to adopt a third, neutral red symbol shaped liked a diamond but called a crystal.

Is it just me or is their something wrong with all of this? What is wrong with the International Red Cross? Islamic symbol is okay, but God forbid they should allow the Jews a Jewish symbol; can't dare offend anyone. Why is it that anti-Semitism remains so widely acceptable to so many?

UCLA lost today, 66-19, against the team "who must not be named." It was so bad that the guys who came over to watch the game left near the beginning of the third quarter. Why? They decided it would be more fun to go help their wives clean up our church after a bridal shower.

This is cool, from MSNBC.com:

MOJAVE, Calif. - XCOR's EZ-Rocket flew into the history books Saturday. The craft made a record-setting point-to-point flight, departing here from the Mojave California Spaceport, gliding to a touchdown at a neighboring airport in California City.

And it was piloted by Dick Rutan, Burt's brother, who flew Voyager around the globe nonstop without refueling a few years back.

It's cool to see the continuing advancement of the technology which will make space travel more common and cheaper. It's also cool to see the Mojave Airport referenced again as what it has become since SpaceShipOne: a spaceport. This should be good for the local economy.

I do not much care for the US Postal Service. I collect postage stamps, and so I'm fond of those, but so far as the service is concerned, I have an intense dislike for it.

My local service at my home has taken a nosedive in the past month or so. It used to be that the mail was delivered around four PM at the latest. I liked our mail carrier and he did a fine job. But in the last month or so I've not seen him and instead have seen several different people pretending to do his job. And the mail has been arriving at 7:00 PM or even as late as 8:00 PM! Or not coming at all.

In one memorable scene from the TV series, Cheers, Cliff Claven, the mailman, had delivered mail along a hallway in an apartment complex. Once he leaves the scene, we witness the inhabitants exiting their doors and exchanging misdelivered mail with one another.

Well, the mail that is delivered to our church suffers that problem on a regular basis. At least twice a week I discover mail delivered to the church that should go to our neighbor, or sometimes to someone on the next block.

Last week, it happened at my house. My next door neighbor came by and handed us our mail--the whole bundle--because it had mistakenly been delivered to his house!

And twice now in the past two weeks, our mail wasn't even delivered at all; it showed up the next morning in one case, mid afternoon in the second, followed much later by the regular mail delivery.

And now, for this deteriorating service, the postal service intends to raise the cost by another 2 cents. I already avoid snail mail as much as I can, doing my bill paying and bill receiving almost exclusively on the web. I will cut back even more now.

And the postal service, like most government agencies, seems not to have a clue about basic economics. When usage declines and their revenue suffers, their thought is to raise the price to compensate for the falloff. Other industries, such as airlines, instead LOWER their prices to encourage people to come back. That's kind of the basic principle of how supply and demand function. Economics 101.

But government bureaucrats and congress people don't think that way. And so the price goes up every time usage declines. And what will happen? Usage will continue to decline, and the revenue will continue to drop. And they'll scratch their heads and raise the price again and again, completely confused and clueless that bad service coupled with overpricing, when there are alternatives to everything they offer, will only result in further declines in their revenue.

Unfortunately, since it is a government operation, it won't go out of business like any similarly incompetent corporation would mercifully do.

Well, SpaceX has now delayed their first launch by at least a week; they're having trouble with the liquid oxygen tank. But Musk figured it would be late, given that this is the first launch for this rocket and it is, after all, rocket science.

SpaceX has postponed the first launch of their Falcon 1 again. MSNBC.com reports:

An upstart rocket company on Saturday postponed its first-ever satellite launch on Saturday after a series of last-minute snags....

After a series of ups and downs, Larry Williams, SpaceX's vice president for international and governmental affairs, announced that the launch would be have to be postponed yet another day, until Sunday at the earliest.

So, maybe Sunday.

According to MSNBC.com, SpaceX has been forced to delay the maiden launch of their Falcon 1 space rocket by 24 hours:

An upstart rocket company says it has delayed the startup of its launch schedule by at least 24 hours, due to the U.S. Army's need to prepare for a missile defense launch.

The maiden launch for the Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, had been scheduled for 4 p.m. ET Friday from an equatorial launch site on an island in the Pacific Ocean's Kwajalein Atoll.

However, the El Segundo, Calif.-based company said in a statement issued late Thursday that the Army Space and Missile Defense Command had bumped the first launch of SpaceX's Falcon1 rocket by 24 hours, to 4 p.m. ET Saturday, "in order to facilitate preparations for a missile defense launch."

MEMRI reports that:

On October 20, 2005, the Lebanese press reported that a delegation from the Presbyterian Church USA, headed by Father Nihad Tu'meh and with Robert Worley as its spokesman,(1) visited southern Lebanon at the invitation of Hizbullah, and met there with the terrorist organization's commander in southern Lebanon, Nabil Qawuq.

During the meeting, Qawuq expressed his doubts about U.S. actions in the region and the intentions of the Bush administration. Worley, on his part, assured Qawuq that he was not defending the U.S. administration, that all delegation members had voted Democratic, and that the Presbyterian Church had been pressured by U.S. Jewish organizations because of its campaign to divest from corporations working with Israel.

A year previously, on October 17, 2004, a Presbyterian Church USA delegation visiting Lebanon also met with Qawuq. MEMRI TV translated excerpts from a report on the meeting that was aired by Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV. During the meeting, church elder Ronald Stone(2) said, "We treasure the precious words of Hizbullah and your expression of goodwill towards the American people. Also, we praise your initiative for dialogue and mutual understanding. We cherish these statements that bring us closer to you. As an elder of our church, I'd like to say that according to my recent experience, relations and conversations with Islamic leaders are a lot easier than dealings and dialogue with Jewish leaders."

I do wonder how history is going to report on the Presbyterian Church USA. I suspect it will not be kind. To me, these "leaders" resemble those in the churches of Germany who applauded the Nazis. There's something desperately wrong with people who think that terrorists are the good guys. Is it really that difficult to figure out that people who blow up synogogues, restaurants, buses and schools in order to kill women and children are the bad guys? Can't they grasp the concept of evil?

As most know, awhile back Pat Robertson called for the assassination of the President of Venuzuala. Now, according to a story in the LA Times, Venuzuala is expelling missionaries.

Last month, Chavez ordered the expulsion of about 200 evangelical Baptist missionaries from the country's Amazon rain forest. He accused them of spying, mining, exploiting indigenous tribes and using jungle airstrips for "imperialist penetration." Last week, the missionaries were given 90 days to leave the zone....

Some observers see the expulsion, which targeted the Florida-based New Tribes Mission and its offshoots, as a part of a hardening attitude toward religious groups since U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson suggested in August that someone assassinate Chavez.

Robertson, besides making vile statements, has brought the name of Christ into disrepute and has harmed the spread of the Gospel message. Peter wrote:

If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name. (1 Peter 4:14-16)

Unfortunately for all of us, Pat Robertson is a meddler.

MSNBC.com reports that SpaceX has set a date for the first launch of the Falcon 1:

After more than three years of development, an upstart competitor to the Goliaths of the global launch industry announced Friday that it would attempt its first blastoff in one week.

The Falcon 1 rocket from Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is scheduled to lift off from a launch complex on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands at 9 a.m. local time on Nov. 26, which translates to 4 p.m. ET on Nov. 25. The launch window lasts four hours.

SpaceX, as the company is known, was founded by software millionaire Elon Musk. In announcing the launch, Musk said he saw the launch as "the first steppingstone in reducing the cost of access to space."...

During Friday's news conference at SpaceX's headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., Musk said "approximately $100 million" has been invested in his company, with 98 percent of that coming from his own wealth. The other 2 percent came from "friends and family who were crazy enough to put some money into the company," he joked.

Musk already has plans to beef up his line of launch vehicles with a heavy-lift Falcon 9, which could conceivably be used for human spaceflight. Indeed, he told reporters that future generations of Falcon rockets would be used for "not just satellites, but really ultimately for human transportation."

So, one week and counting...

Remarkably, for the second straight year, Congress passed a budget that fully funds NASA, so the President's vision for space exploration, the building of the shuttle replacement and a return to the moon by 2018 continues. NASA's FY 2006 share of the federal budget comes to $16.5 billion. For those who think we should focus our attention on problems here on earth, well, that is precisely what we do. The bulk of the federal budget goes to things like social security, medicare, education, and the like. NASA's $16.5 billion for the year represents only 0.7 percent of the federal budget. 99.3 percent of the federal budget focuses on all those things that the naysayers think are important.

I suspect that the naysayers drop a larger percent of their personal budgets on watching movies and other frivolous things (or do such people really spend all their time and money helping the homeless at soup kitchens?)

So there.

Before teaching class tonight at Quartz Hill School of Theology, I was looking at the science news on MSNBC.com and discovered that a letter I’d written to Alan Boyle, who writes Cosmic Log there, was published in his column. It is critical of Intelligent Design. You can see it here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3217961/

Just scroll down to the second November 11 posting; it is at the beginning, and he gives my name, and mentions the School of Theology!

Space.com (www.space.com) is reporting that lasers are that much closer to becoming practical weapons:

Solid Success in Speed-of-Light Weaponry

A laser has blasted to a new energy level, a milestone that picks up the pace for moving them from the lab onto the battlefield.

Northrop Grumman announced November 9 that the company’s solid-state laser being built for the military has fired one of the most powerful beams yet produced by an electric laser.

The advancement stems from a military effort to leap frog speed-of-light technology under the Joint High Power Solid-State Laser (JHPSSL) demonstration program.

The solid-state laser churned out more than 27 kilowatts of energy with a run time of 350 seconds. In a separate test, the company reported that the laser demonstrated “excellent beam quality” at 19 kilowatts power level, showing how well the beam can be focused and thus get to a target. The company’s laser demonstrator could have operated much longer....

Engineers raised on Star Trek are determined to make it happen. We already have communicators, after all. Now, if we can just figure out how to build warp engines...

Sigh. Pat Robertson's constituency must appreciate the fact that he says stupid, foul things. Otherwise, it's hard to explain how come he still has a forum to keep spouting nonsense. According to MSNBC.com (www.msnbc.com), now he's popped off with this:

WASHINGTON - Conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting “intelligent design” and warned them Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.
Robertson, a former Republican presidential candidate and founder of the influential conservative Christian Broadcasting Network and Christian Coalition, has a long record of similar apocalyptic warnings and provocative statements....

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected him from your city,” Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, “The 700 Club.”

“And don’t wonder why he hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for his help because he might not be there,” he said.

You know what? Just because people don't agree with Intelligent Design Theory, that doesn't mean they have rejected God. One can reject Intelligent Design Theory and still believe in God and be a Christian. Apparently Pat Robertson can't comprehend that, and apparently his followers don't either; but then, it seems, many creationists and the like demonize their opponents in just this way on a regular basis. I've found it relatively common among many of my fellow Christians to consign those who dare disagree on some point of doctrine, however minor, to Hell.

From the theological standpoint, I believe that the intelligent design concept is deeply flawed. It is simply a new version of a very old error: the God of the Gaps fallacy. To put it simply, the God of the Gaps fallacy argues that God is to be defined as mystery. Where there is mystery, there is God: if we find something in the world we don’t understand, the explanation is always the same: God did it.

This is an incredibly lazy approach to the world. When explanations for objects and events are found—as they must always be—the God of this fallacy inevitably shrinks. Needless to say, those caught in the grip of this fallacy inevitably fear explanations. Each time humanity’s understanding of the universe grows, a little piece of their God shrinks. They little realize that they’re worshiping a false God who needs to disappear.

Most theologians, along with most scientists, discarded the God of the Gaps fallacy a long time ago. God is not dependent for his existence on ignorance.

One of the sites I read regularly is the one belonging to Jerry Pournelle, the science fiction author (www.jerrypournelle.com). He has written several novels on his own, as well as in collaboration with Larry Niven. He also has a PhD and has been involved in the space program and is a computer expert, having written for the print version of Byte Magazine for years and now the online edition. Anyhow, I found this humerous item on his page:

President Bush May Send Up To 5 Marines For French Assistance

President Bush has authorized the Joint Chiefs to begin drawing up a battle plan to pull France's ass out of the fire again. Facing an apparent overwhelming force of up to 400 pissed off teenagers Mr. Bush doubts France's ability to hold off the little pissants. "Hell, if the last two world wars are any indication, I would expect France to surrender any day now", said Bush.
Joint Chiefs head, Gen. Peter Pace, warned the President that it might be necessary to send up to 5 marines to get things under control. The general admitted that 5 marines may be overkill but he wanted to get this thing under control within 24 hours of arriving on scene. He stated he was having a hard time finding even one marine to help those ungrateful bastards out for a third time but thought that he could persuade a few women marines to do the job before they went on pregnancy leave.

President Bush asked Gen. Pace to get our marines out of there as soon as possible after order was restored. He also reminded Gen. Pace to make sure the marines did not take soap, razors, or deodorant with them. The less they stand out the better.

Cruel, I suppose, but funny.

According to Space.com (www.space.com):

MOSCOW (AP) – Russian space officials Monday set a Nov. 9 blastoff for a European probe to explore Venus after its earlier launch was postponed because of a booster rocket problem.
Engineers will be able to fix the flaws by that date, the Federal Space Agency said in scheduling the launch at the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

SpaceDaily.com (www.spacedaily.com) gives a nice overview of all the previous space missions to Venus:

1961: Venera 1 (Venus 1), Soviet-made probe designed for a fly-by of Venus. Fate unknown. Communications with ground station broke down about seven million kilometers (4.37 million miles) from Earth.

1962: Mariner 1 and Mariner 2 (US). Mariner 1 veered off-course and had to be destroyed shortly after launch. Mariner 2 became the first successful interplanetary probe. Found no significant magnetic fields or radiation belts around Venus. Heat sensors found the surface to be dry and scorching hot.

1965-83: Venera 2 - Venera 16. Ambitious programme of Soviet campaign of fly-bys and landings, characterised by several failures but some successes. Among them: Venera 7 (1970), which parachuted a capsule of scientific instruments to the surface, marking the first successful landing on Venus, and Venera 9 (1975), which sent back the first TV pictures of the Venusian surface.

1967: Mariner 5 (US). Flyby, measuring magnetic fields, charged particles, ultra-violet emissions.

1973: Mariner 10 (US). NASA flyby of a probe en route for Mercury. Returned first close up pictures of Venus, despite navigational problems.

1978: Pioneer Venus (US). Orbiter, operated until 1992. Included the Pioneer Venus Multiprobe (US). Comprised one large and three small probes, equipped with sensors, that were sent down to the surface in 1978.

1984: Vega 1 and 2 (Soviet). Flybys of Venus while en route to Halley's Comet, dropped scientific packages to surface.

1989: Magellan (US). Orbiter designed to map Venus' surface. Highly successful. Operated until 1994.

- Galileo (US). Flyby of Venus in 1990 while en route to the outer planets.
2004: Messenger (US). Two scheduled fly-bys of Venus (Oct 2006, June 2007) en route to Mercury.

Venus is a harsh place to visit: sulphuric acid clouds and 800 degree F. surface temperatures.

Google now allows searches of books. They've been scanning books in the public domain from the University of Michigan library, among other places. It is only the beginning, but already, it seems to be quite a useful resource. Check it out:

http://print.google.com/

Of course, the project has generated controversy, primarily in how they are going to handle books that are not in the public domain.

Ugh. From Jihad Watch (http://www.jihadwatch.org/):

Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the "millet" system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.

In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist "hijab" while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.

The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced "places of sin," such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.

A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out.
"All we demand is to be left alone," said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local "emirs" engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

President Jacques Chirac and Premier de Villepin are especially sore because they had believed that their opposition to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 would give France a heroic image in the Muslim community.

That illusion has now been shattered — and the Chirac administration, already passing through a deepening political crisis, appears to be clueless about how to cope with what the Parisian daily France Soir has called a "ticking time bomb."

It is now clear that a good portion of France's Muslims not only refuse to assimilate into "the superior French culture," but firmly believe that Islam offers the highest forms of life to which all mankind should aspire.

So what is the solution? One solution, offered by Gilles Kepel, an adviser to Chirac on Islamic affairs, is the creation of "a new Andalusia" in which Christians and Muslims would live side by side and cooperate to create a new cultural synthesis.

The problem with Kepel's vision, however, is that it does not address the important issue of political power. Who will rule this new Andalusia: Muslims or the largely secularist Frenchmen?

And of course, the new Intafada continues elsewhere in Europe, too. It's not only France that's burning...

A two state solution was good enough for the Israelis, eh. Land for peace. Does it seem such a good idea now that we're talking about France?

Events in France give new meaning to the word schadenfreude: taking guilty delight when something bad happens to someone you know. Gee, maybe appeasing Moslem extremists doesn't do any good? You'd think they'd have learned that from their experiences with Germany. Oh well. Of course, they don't seem willing to learn much of anything. They still think socialism is a fine idea, despite their 9.8 per cent unemployment versus the U.S. 5 per cent.

Back in the summers of 1976 and 1977 I worked on a kibbutz in Israel; that was while I was an undergraduate in college. While there, I discovered the Jerusalem Post (I still subscribe to the International edition) and within its pages, I discovered a political cartoon, Dry Bones.

Well, today, I discovered that Yaakov Kirschen, who still draws that cartoon, has a blog. He tells the stories behind his comics and puts them on the blog.

You can see it here:

http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com/

I really like his cartoons. I even bought a book of his collected cartoons published back when I was still in college.

What is a failed writer? A failed writer is a writer who gives up, a writer who quits, a writer who does not write. Failure is not a consequence of an editor turning you down. Failure is not doing the writing. If you're writing, you're not a failure.

A song of ascents.
I lift up my eyes to you,
to you whose throne is in heaven.
As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he shows us his mercy.
(Psalm 123:1-2)

Whether we live in joy or in despair, God remains with us.

MEMRI is a website I visit regularly; I also receive emails from them. I just got this one today, which I found interesting:


Liberal Bahraini Journalist: "Who Hates America in the Arab and Muslim World, and Why"
To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD101605

Against the backdrop of the September 2005 tour of the Middle East by U.S. State Department official and presidential advisor Karen Hughes, who is heading the effort to improve the U.S.'s image abroad, in a recent article liberal Bahraini journalist 'Omran Salman presents two explanations for the hatred towards America: Arab and Muslim culture, and a post 9/11 coalition of Islamists, Pan Arab Ba'athists and nationalists, and Arab regimes.(1)

The following are excerpts from the article:

Hatred is a General Phenomenon in the Arab and Muslim World, and Not Limited to Americans
"...Hatred in the Arab and Muslim world is a general phenomenon that is not limited only to the Americans. It is possible that the Arabs and Muslims hate each other no less than they hate others...

"In the 1990s, over 200,000 citizens were killed in Algeria – most of them by extremist Islamic groups. What was the response of most of the Arabs and Muslims? A mixture of amusement and of presenting justifications for the murderers and terrorists. During those years, the Taliban movement also abused Shi'ites, Azeris, Tajikis, and other minorities, and no one did anything [to stop it].

"In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, occupied it, and expelled its residents. What was the response of the Arabs and Muslims? Nothing. On the contrary: Most Arabs and Muslims supported Saddam... And in 1991, Saddam murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites and Kurds, and most Arabs and Muslims did not condemn it.

"These days, the Arab Janjaweed militias, which are supported by the Khartoum government, are continuing their racist campaign of annihilation against the African Muslims in Darfour.
"In Iraq, Al-Zarqawi and the terror groups affiliated with him are slaughtering Shi'ites and blowing up their mosques and their schools, after declaring war on them. In both cases, none of the Arabs or the Muslims are acting to prevent this, or even to condemn the deeds.

"In total, during a single decade alone no less than half a million Arab and Muslim victims were murdered by Arabs and Muslims.

"In addition, the religious, ethnic, and national minorities in the Arab world, such as the Shi'ites, Isma'ilis, Zaidis, Christians, and Jews, have been subject to humiliation characterized by racism...

The U.S.'s Powerful Response to 9/11 Infuriates the Extremist Muslims and Pan-Arabs as well as the Arab Governments

"American policy in the [Arab and Muslim] region did not change essentially for over 50 years, until 2000. So what new thing happened to arouse the hatred [towards the U.S.] in its current broad scope? ...

"The new element in the American-Arab-Islamic arena was the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and the U.S.'s powerful and decisive response. This response was aimed at accomplishing three goals simultaneously.

"First, to strike a crushing blow against the Al-Qaeda organization and its allies in the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. This goal was accomplished.

"Second, to destroy the despotic regime of Saddam Hussein and of the fascist Ba'th party in Iraq. This goal too was accomplished.

"Third, to spread democracy and freedom in the Middle East. This project will continue for decades to come.

"The first blow infuriated the Islamists; the second blow infuriated the pan-Arab nationalists; and the third blow infuriated the Arab regimes.

"Gradually, an unofficial alliance emerged between these three parties, with the long-term goal to thwart the new American policy. [But] since this alliance is too weak to respond militarily to the American policy, it responds in the media and with propaganda.

"Its first goal was to distort the image of the U.S. in order to make the Arab citizens loathe everything American.

"The main means which they are using to distort the image of the U.S. are:

"1. The printed and electronic media, which are for the most part subject to the control of the Arab governments (whether via funding or via influence), beginning with Al-Jazeera in Qatar and including the national papers in Egypt.

"2. Educational programs, all of which are subject to control by the Arab governments and to the influence of the Islamic groups.

"3. The mosques, which are also subject to the control of governments and the Islamic groups, via the Ministries of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs in the Arab countries. Exceptions are the Shi'ite mosques, because the Shi'ites are usually economically independent from the governments of their countries.

"This [propaganda] machine operated at full power in order to brainwash the Arab citizens, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in order to fan the hatred against the U.S. ...

"[The Islamists, the pan-Arab nationalists, and the Arab regimes] are the ones who hate America. The ordinary Arab and Muslim citizens are mere blindfolded hostages in the hands of this alliance.

"The U.S. must respond [to the hatred against it] not by appealing to the hostages and convincing them of the good things in the U.S. – because they are incapable of seeing them even if they wanted to.

"They must be helped first of all by freeing them of their [Islamist, pan-Arab, and Arab government] abductors."

Endnote:
(1) Mideast Transparent, October 25, 2005.



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I subscribe to Sky and Telescope Magazine, which is a magazine for amateur astronomers and those who enjoy astronomy. The cover article of the current issue (December, 2005) is about the good work that the European orbiter Mars Express is doing at the Red Planet; the photographs are just spectacular.

There's also a report on the Deep Impact probe that slammed into the comet Tempel 1. According to the spectroscopic analysis, the comet is made up of water, carbon dioxide, hydrogen cyanide, methyl cyanide, and other organic molecules. There are also minerals like olivine, calcite, and aluminum oxide.

Based on the nature of the explosion from the impact and the way the dust looked and acted, the concensus at the moment is that the mass of Tempel 1 is 72 trillion kilograms. Its density is about 0.6 gram per cubic centimeter. That value, along with the gravity dominated nature of the nucleus, has led team members of the Deep Impact mission to conclude that Comet Tempel 1 is a porous rubble pile--a loose body that is weakly held together by gravity.

The crater created by the Deep Impact probe's colision is thought to be about 100 meters (330 feet) across and about 30 meters deep.

They got some neat photos, too, one of which was in the article in this current issue of Sky and Telescope.

You know, I've lost all respect and confidence in the newsmedia. CNN bothers to give a report on Louis Farrakhan. The report is uncritical, lauditory, spun to present him as a reasonable and decent fellow:

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said Saturday that the federal government should be charged with "criminal neglect of the people of New Orleans."

"For five days, the government did not act. Lives were lost," Farrakhan said at the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March. "We charge America with criminal neglect."
A crowd of thousands cheered as dozens of prominent speakers -- academics, activists, artists and media pundits -- spoke, recited poetry and sang songs in the 12-hour program on the National Mall.

Pointing to the broad spectrum of participants, Farrakhan said the march included an "unprecedented" array of black leaders of organizations "coming together to speak to America and the world with one voice."

"This tells us that a new day is dawning in America," he said.

Yes, a new day. A day when the newsmedia treats an anti-Semitic loon with respect and reports his words and his ideas as if they are worth anyone's attention. A new day when they think what he does is reasonable and legitimate and newsworthy. A day when a man who believes all the anti-Semitic claptrap that would have warmed the heart of Adolf Hitler, when such a man, who believes that whites are the creation of a mad scientist, who believes that AIDS was created in a laboratory, who believes that 911 was an "inside job", who believes that the flooding in New Orleans was caused by bombs set off in the levies for the purpose of killing African Americans, who repeats lies on a regular basis as if they were facts. Yes, this is what the news media thinks is news. This is what gains their uncritical reporting as fact and they give him a platform to spout his lies and his idiocy and they act as if he matters. What next, are they going to go to Idaho and interview the neo-Nazis hiding in their compounds there? If not, then why do they give this jerk a forum?

But then it has always been thus, it seems, since the last century, when Adolf Hitler was portrayed by the newsmedia as a decent fellow to be negotiated with, while Chamberlain was praised and Churchill villified. Yes, this is the same newsmedia, who praised Stalin while he starved Ukranians by the millions. Yes, a news media who even now thinks Mao was cool and Che was a good fellow. Who thinks that Communism is a good thing and waxes nostalgic over dead socialist dictators. A news media who thinks that Castro is a decent man (so what that he throws people in jail and kills those who write or say things he doesn't like) and that there's nothing peculiar about dictorships running the human rights commissions at the UN.

So why shouldn't they think Farakhan is a fine fellow. After all they're cheerleaders for those who chop off heads and blow up children. Terrorists are only "insurgents," or "freedom fighters" fighting the good fight against tyrany--since they imagine America is merely the home of the oppressors and the land of the dictators. They seem to imagine that the enemies of America are righteous and doing the Lords work. America is evil and deserves to be punished they think.

I can only hope that history judges them for the foul, evil, moronic people that they are. I find it difficult to come up with words to express my contempt for them. The newsmedia is unworthy of any respect, and is not particularly trustworthy if they present reports like this. Why should I believe them if they won't tell us who Farakhan is and what he really believes? Why should I listen to them when they act like a crackpot's ideas deserve equal billing?

If reporters would merely do their jobs, and in their reports of Farakhan point out that the Nation of Islam, whom he leads, believes certain foul things, then that would be okay. If perhaps they would actually read Elijah Muhammed's book Message to the Black Man in America and report what it says; if, every time they interviewed Farakhan, they would quote from it and ask him to explain how he can believe such racist idiocy, then I could stomach the news reports about him. Of course, if they forced him and those who march with him, those who participate in what he does, who want to tell us "well, look at all the good work he does"--if they actually confronted them with his vile beliefs, how much longer would he be followed? How much longer would anyone listen to him? But the news media abrogates their responsibilities and become willing participants in his evil, as if anti-Semites forming youth groups and getting people into the streets and making them politically active is a good thing.

When I hear certain evangelicals commenting on natural disasters, or other unfortunate events, that they are signs that the end of the world is near, I can't quite help but think of Chicken Little and wonder whether they know that story? Or worse, they sound like the boy who cried wolf. Frankly, when Christians go off like a certain televangelist with a tendency to say stupid things just did, they wind up sounding like dolts. Why, oh, why don't Christians work harder at being educated and knowledgable? Why can't they calm fears, pointing out that every year, for the last few thousand of them, there has been one 8 point earthquake and seventeen 7 point earthquakes? And hurricane frequency and intensity go in cycles. There's nothing unusual going on. Why don't idiot televangelists just comfort the suffering instead of sounding like a stupid chicken?

When something bad happens, there are those who take delight at looking at the horror and pronouncing that it is a judgment against the people who suffered. Of course, in the current hurricane season, this is performed in a schizophrenic way. Somehow the hurricanes must be a judgment against the current administration, or against US policy here or there, or because we tolerate homosexuals, or pornography, or some such thing. Odd, really, given that Washington DC wasn’t washed away at all. And I don’t think that one can demonstrate that the majority of our nation’s gay population suffered from what happened along the Gulf Coast, nor, after a quick googling, have I been able to tell that there is any less pornography available.

So if God is judging those particular sins which we might object to, are we going to also argue that God’s aim was off and instead of hitting the guilty people, instead of making the wicked homeless or drowned, it was, instead, a bunch of generally poor, sick and disadvantaged people who suffered in New Orleans, people who were already mostly living on the sucky side of life? God was just drunk or something, huh? And meanwhile, the wonderful people who brought us 911, suicide bombers blowing up old women and children, and sawing heads off slowly with dull knives while video tapes roll, dance with glee and point their fingers, informing us that God is indeed damning the infidel for his horrible toleration of Jews, gays, and uppity women.

You know what? If God is as powerful as we theologians like to point out, and as all-knowing as we also argue, then don’t you suppose if he were judging whatever thing you imagine is most vile in American society, that he could do it without causing collateral damage? I mean, our own military has smart bombs that they can shoot down a stove pipe. Don’t you think God’s tech might be up to that sort of challenge?

Job’s friends watched bad things happen to Job and then blamed him for his own suffering: “if you weren’t such a wicked sinner, none of this would be happening to you. Fess up. What have you done?” And the more poor Job argued for his innocence, the harsher his friend’s condemnations of his imagined sins became.

Of course, if we really read the story, we will discover that Job’s friends had a bit of a problem. Their theological understanding of God and how he works was identical to that of the Devil. Which should serve as a clue that there’s something wrong with what Job’s friends are arguing.

And what exactly is their argument? They believe that if you’re good, then God will bless you and if you’re bad, God will smack you. That’s what the Devil believed, too.

But you see, the reality is, God doesn’t work the way the Devil or Job’s friends thought. He doesn’t work the way that the jihadists or other fundamentalists want us to believe. Or for that matter, he doesn’t work the way most everyone else already believes, either. Because just about everyone believes that God has a list, and they believe that if only they can find it, memorize it, and follow it to the letter, then all will be well.

But such a belief is mere superstition.

So why, then, do we do find lists in the Bible that are very specific about what things are good and what things are bad? Why does the Bible encourage us to behave?

But here’s a radical question: why do we think this listing of ethical and unethical behavior has anything to do with our relationship with God? Why do we imagine a cause and effect relationship between our behavior and whether God loves us?

How many of us have someone in our life whom we are constantly doing stuff for? It seems like they are always in crisis, always having a flat tire, always needing a sink repaired, a computer hard drive defragged. We’re always watching their children, or lending them “twenty bucks till payday”. We’re always there for them.

But the first time we ask them to do something for us, they can’t help. “I’m sorry, but I’m all out of cash just now.” They’ve made plans. They are too busy, not interested, or something came up. They are never there for us and they always have very reasonable excuses for why they didn’t get back to us. We find ourselves forever giving and never getting anything back. We wonder why they have no problem asking us for help, while it is unreasonable to even hope for an acknowledgment, let alone a thanks.

Kind of like how it is when we take care of a baby, eh?

We get up at three in the morning, but when we ask them to mow the grass, they just cry and insist that we feed them or change their diapers instead.
Or how about this: our friends that keep a running tally on who’s done something nice for them? If we invite them over, they feel obligated to invite us over. In fact, they have a list of all the things we’ve ever done for them, and they keep a list of everything they’ve ever done for us, and they work hard at keeping the lists the same length. If we do something for them, they do something for us. They are always keeping track, keeping count, keeping a balance, as if they are a borrower and we’re a creditor. They don’t want to fall behind or feel indebted.

Is that a good way to live? Is that a fine way to relate to our friends? Do we relate to our parents that way? Is that what we expect of our kids? “Okay kid, I diapered your bottom for the last two years, now it’s your turn” or “you know, I’ve seen to it that you had food three times a day for the last eighteen years. I’m expecting payback real soon now.”

That sounds ludicrous, but how many people act that way with God? How often do we think of our relationship with God that way?

“You know God, I went to church today, I put money in the offering, heck, I went twice today and that money…it was a TWENTY! Did you see that? Huh? And how about when that guy cut me off. I didn’t cuss once! And you know Jill down at work? I haven’t had an affair with her yet, now have I? And it’s not like she doesn’t want me.”

We’re always asking God for help, to make us well, give us money, protect us, keep us safe on our travels, bless our activities, strengthen our weaknesses, give us the words to say.

And yet, most of the billions of people on the planet don’t respond to God much at all; in fact, we hardly think about him except when we hurt and then we’re crying out for help right away. And whenever something goes wrong, we’re quick to blame him or at least to ask, “So what were you thinking?” and “why?” We talk to God when we need stuff. Otherwise, we’re too busy living our lives and doing our thing.

God is the lover sending flowers and candy to the beautiful neighbor, who listens to her tales of woe, and then watches her go out with Joe Loser instead. What do you suppose God thinks about that?

Not a thing. He doesn’t even notice.

Why? Because he LOVES us.

He gave everything he had when we were his enemies. We have trouble sometimes doing things for our dear friends and family. Would we even consider lifting a finger, let alone giving all we have, to someone who just punched us in the face and sued us for a million dollars because our face broke his hand? And yet that’s precisely how God operates.

Therefore, when we start doing things as if to “even the score,” God doesn’t understand what in the world we’re going on about. He’s already giving us stuff, he already loves us. His question for us is, “How can you be nice to me, only thinking of what you’ll get out of it? You think that’s love?”

“I gave you roses, and I made the bed, and I picked up my socks and put them in the hamper. Did you see that? And how ‘bout this, I put the toilet seat down! So tonight, don’t you feel I deserve to get lucky?”
Does that work?

Ever? Are our spouses going to be happy with us? Are we going to get anywhere with an attitude like that? Do we know what we sound like when we talk that way?
So how is it that we’ve decided that if we live good lives and do good things, that for that reason, God must protect us from the horrors of life? Ethics has nothing to do with whether God loves us. He simply loves us, just as we simply love our babies.

It is superstitious to imagine that the reason we lost the basketball game today is because we didn’t wear our lucky underwear. But, if only we’d prayed more. If only we weren’t such sinners. If only we read our Bibles more. If only we had tithed better. Then God would have made us win that game. No. That’s all superstitious too. We lost because the other team played the game better.

It’s really as simple as that.

If you build your house on the edge of the ocean, below sea level, it might get wet. If you build your house on an earthquake fault, it might fall down. That’s all there is to it. If you spend your entire paycheck at the bar Friday night, don’t be surprised when you get evicted because you forgot to pay the rent. We make an enormous mistake in imagining that there is a connection between our ethics and whether God loves us or whether we get the blessings of God. God’s love is not dependent on how we behave or act.

If we’re good because we think God will then be obligated to bless us—then we’re not being good at all and, even worse, we’re accusing God of not being good. We’re telling him that the ONLY reason he is nice to us is because he’s getting something out of it. We’re buying him off, earning his favor. Too often, the only reason we put the toilet seat down and picked up our socks is because we think we’ll get lucky. That is not loving our spouces. That is manipulating them to get something from them that we imagine they don’t want to give us. And so the same sort of behavior, no matter how we might try to pretty it up with spiritual verbiage, is certainly not loving God. Instead, it is turning God into a whore.

I've been distracted of late. Neurofibromatosis, type I. Often shortened to just NF-1. This is a medical term, relating to a neurological disease, that I now need to learn about. My oldest daughter, Vanessa, had a doctor’s appointment recently. For somewhile now, Vanessa has had some freckling and maybe half a dozen dime sized faded brown spots on her left side. We were thinking that maybe she could see a dermitologist to get them taken care of, since she seems embarrassed by them: she will rarely wear a bikini as a consequence. At twelve years of age, she’s starting to think more about how she looks.

So, to the doctor my wife took her. Vanessa’s bloodwork all came back normal; in fact, the doctor said he wished his own blood work were so good. But as soon as he saw the spots, he got very quiet, felt my daughters abdomon, and then, when he was done, took my wife out of the room while Vanessa got out of her paper gown and back into her normal clothes.

“Did you feel something?” my wife asked.

“No. She’s fine. But I’m concerned about those spots; we call them café-au-lait spots.”

“She has Starbucks disease?”

The doctor smiled at the joke. “No, but I want her to get an MRI. Right away.”
Rather than leaving it up to my wife to make the call, he called the local MRI facility and set up an apointment for Vanessa. And he told my wife that he strongly suspects that Vanessa has NF-1, explaining that it was a genetically based neurological ailment.

My wife phoned me with the news. When she got home, she went straight to her computer and looked up more details online. I also did some searching and discovered some details.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) has created specific criteria for the diagnosis of NF-1. Two of these seven “Cardinal Clinical Features” are required for positive diagnosis:

• 6 or more café-au-lait macules over 5 millimeters in greatest diameter in prepubertal individuals and over 15 millimeters in greatest diameter in postpubertal individuals
• 2 or more neurofibromas of any type or 1 plexiform neurofibroma
• Freckling around the armpit or groin
• Optic glioma
• 2 or more Lisch nodules (iris harmartomas)
• A distinctive osseous lesion such as sphenoid dysplasia or thinning of the long bone cortex with or without pseudarthrosis
• A first degree relative (parent, sibling, or offspring) with NF-1 by the above criteria (adapted from: Huson SM, Hughes RAC. The Neurofibromatoses. London, UK: Chapman and Hall; 1994;1.3.2:9)

It used to be thought that this was the illness that the Elephant Man had; it is now known that, although he may have suffered from this disease as well, his primary problem was Proteus Syndrome, a problem that affects tissue, not just the nerves. From what I have read, the prognosis for those with NF-1 is good. In most cases, symptoms of NF-1 are mild, and patients live normal and productive lives.
However, and this is the scary part: tumors are a possibility and can be very serious. Most are benign, but malignancy can occur. My wife made the mistake of looking on some bulletin boards devoted to the disease and read horror stories. I encouraged her to stop reading such things.

About five days after the preliminary diagnosis, Vanessa had an MRI of her brain, to check for brain tumors. It took about two hours, with an hour and a half of that time spent on the table. She didn’t mind it too much, outside of the one injection that they had to give her to increase the contrast: they put something into her bloodstream. Vanessa hates needles and shots, and so was quite unhappy about that.

Then, for the next two days my wife and I had to wait for the results, which turned out to be negative. We joked with her that they did an MRI of her head and found nothing. Her response was, “That’s messed up.”

So, for the moment, she is clear, without any tumors, aneurisms or any other problems. Nevertheless, her pediatrician has told us to get her to a neurologist that specializes in such things, so my wife is researching some of the specialists in our local area who work on such things.

At the moment, there is no cure for NF-1, nor is there any treatment, aside from surgery, chemotherapy or radiation treatments should any tumors develop. But for now, Vanessa is perfectly healthy and tumor free. This week she tried out for cross country in her middle school.