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.



*********************
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.

MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)

P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837

Phone: (202) 955-9070

Fax: (202) 955-9077

E-Mail: memri@memri.org

www.memri.org

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.

The Attorney General of the state of California has sued McDonald's and Wendy's for failing to put warning labels on French Fries telling consumers that they contain chemicals (which in very large doses) might cause cancer or other health problems. Also included in the lawsuit are various makers of potato chips.

The fact that it takes high dosages to give cancer to rats, but that the very, very low dosages found in fried foods (naturally, no less; it's not like the chemical is being added) has not been found to be harmful apparently matters not to this elected official.

But then, like so many, he has no understanding of science. He also lacks the common sense God gave to turnips. Apparently, our state Attorney General is a blithering idiot.

Also, he apparently has way too much time on his hands. What, this state official has nothing better to do than pick on naturally occuring chemicals that people have been consuming without problems for years and years? There are no criminals in need of catching, or whatever it is he is supposed to be doing with his time?

This is why we make jokes about lawyers and politicians.

According to news reports, the Rev. Fred Phelps, founder of Westboro Baptist in Kansas, contends that American soldiers are being killed in Iraq as vengeance from God for protecting a country that harbors gays. The church, which is not affiliated with a larger denomination, is made up mostly of Phelps' children, grandchildren and in-laws. He and his followers have been crisscrossing the country to demonstrate at the funerals of American soldiers who have died in Iraq. At the funeral, they wave signs at the morners and yell at them that "God hates fags" and "God hates you."

This is the same group that also visits the funerals of gay people, most famously at that of Matthew Shepherd, where they wave signs with the deceased's name and the message that the deceased is now burning in Hell.

Apparently, from accounts I've read, this church has successfully sued some municipalities for infringing on their civil rights or failing to protect them properly for their protests.

Nice people these are not.

I can think of many words to use in denouncing Fred Phelps and his followers. But I have to remind myself that Jesus died for them, and that despite their opinion to the contrary, God loves sinners, even sinners like them.

On the other hand, Jesus did not refrain from harsh condemnation of the self-righteous. So his words will work with these vile people:

You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean.In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of
hypocrisy and wickedness. (Matthew 23:28-29)

I'd like to throw at them what Jesus threw at the self-righteous in his day just a few lines later, in verse 31. But he was God so he could be more certain about someone's actual future destination.

And besides, repentence is always possible. And I also remind myself over and over: salvation is by grace, not by works. Being an asshole does not negate the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

Every so often I receive email from anti-Semites. Today was one of those every so oftens. Since I teach a course on the History of Anti-Semitism, I find such email useful as a primary source; as is very common, the email is a conglomeration of cut and pasted articles, and excessively long.

This one was a little different in that it included a weird diatribe against the Bible, making it too a part of the Jewish conspiracy to rule the world (which seems to be going badly, given how Jews have been, and continue to be so badly persecuted most places in most times).

I find it hard to understand crackpots. Most crackpots I try to ignore. They depress me. Unfortunately, these particular crackpots have been responsible for murdering millions, so I can't in good conscience ignore them or be silent. But arguing with them is as effective as nailing jello to a tree. So what to do? Taking a page from Jesus' response to certain leaders, condemnation is the tactic I use now; approaching them in love and reason consistently results in only condemnation and personal attacks; the nicer I get, the meaner they become. Very odd.

For those who have not swallowed the lies of the hate-mongers, then on the website I've posted a considerable body of material refuting and warning against the crackpots. And I teach that class; I don't know what else I can do.

You know, I really don't understand statements like this (from a news article):

The Family Research Council, a conservative Christian think tank in Washington, D.C., argues in its book Getting It Straight that finding people are born gay "would advance the idea that sexual orientation is an innate characteristic, like race; that homosexuals, like African-Americans, should be legally protected against 'discrimination;' and that disapproval of homosexuality should be as socially stigmatized as racism. However, it is not true."

First, do these people think that discriminating against gay people is a good thing? It certainly sounds like they do. They frankly give the impression that rouding gay people up and sticking them in concentration camps might be part of their agenda.

I wonder too, what part of what Paul said does the Family Research Council not comprehend:

For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Cor. 15:22)

We are sinners because we are born that way. Duh. And all of us are sinners. Why in the world pick on gay people more than gluttons or the prideful, or even the self-righteous? And what part of Jesus dying for us sinners, and that as a consequence we can all be one in Christ, is so tough to get? Do they seriously want to argue that Jesus died for everyone except gays? Sounds like they might.

Or what part of "loving your neighbor as yourself" is so tough to understand? Perhaps hating your neighbor gets in the way of comprehending simple sentences?

Further rantings against those who hate gays shows up in my article, God Loves Gay People.

I get email. My article that points out that the United States is not a Christian nation and that its founders were not all Christians (see Notes on the Founding Fathers and the Separation of Church and State) has brought me more hate mail than anything else I've written. It's also brought me acolades, however, ranging from the fact that it is frequently cited by others, to its being reprinted at least once by a newspaper back east.

This week I received an email from someone accusing me of blasphemy on the basis of this article. I'm still not quite sure how arguing against the US being a Christian nation falls into that category, despite the letter writer's insistence that it does based on his odd defintion of blasphemy. Anyhow. I've always been a bit concerned about those who wish to argue that the US is a Christian nation. Many of them seem to be part of what is called Dominion theology (and a few of them have also been anti-Semites, though I don't think the two necessarily go together). Most of the negative responses I get consist of people sending me quotes that seem always to be identical to those contained in the books by David Barton (founder and president of WallBuilders), in which he argues against separation of church and state. He insists that the US is a Christian nation and presents many quotes that he believes proves his contention. The fact that many are out of context and even a few just made up seems not to disturb those who have fallen under his influence.

Frankly, one would think that the history of Europe through the middle ages and up to the present time would be enough to demonstrate the wisdom of separating church and state. Roger Williams, the Baptist who founded Rhode Island and argued for the concept, suggested that the state tends to corrupt the church. Jefferson, some years later, argued the other way around, that the church tends to corrupt the state. I think a reading of history demonstrates that both men are right.

I fear that if people like Barton ever got the upper hand, I'd wind up being one of those experiencing what Roger Williams did, when he was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for, well, being a Baptist.

It is a very peculiar thing how Israel is so often targeted by various groups. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America issues anti-Israel diatribes, and so too, now does the Presbyterian Church. It really makes little sense. James Lileks had some interesting thoughts on the motivation behind this odd focus on a tiny country:

The Presbyterian Church (USA) -- not the members, but the learned elders -- has announced it will use its stock holdings to target Israel for being mean to the Palestinians.

But they're not anti-Semites. Heavens, nay. Don't you dare question their philosemitism! No, they looked at the entire world, including countries that lop off your skull if you convert to Presbyterianism, and what did they choose as the object of their ire? A country the size of a potato chip hanging on the edge of a region noted for despotism and barbarity. By some peculiar coincidence, it happens to be full of Jews.

The right and the left seem to take turns deciding who's going to be anti-Semitic. But for some time now, the hard left in the West has led the charge against the Jews -- or, as the sleight-of-hand term has it, the Zionists.

These adolescent spirits love nothing more than a revolution, a story of a scrappy underdog rising up against a colonizing power, and the Palestinians, with their romantically masked fighters and thrilling weapon-brandishing, fit the bill. Plus, there's something so deliciously naughty and transgressive about calling Jews the new Nazis.

It doesn't matter that one side is a liberal democracy that grants rights to women and non-Jews while the other has thugs and assassins for rulers and sends its kids to summer camps where they learn the joys of good ol' fashioned Jew-killing.

According to the hard left's script, Israel was created when some Europeans (hisssss) invaded the sovereign nation of Palestine, even though we all know the Jewish homeland is somewhere outside Passaic, N.J. Then for no reason Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza -- which for some reason had not been set up as New Palestine by the Egyptians and the Jordanians, but never mind -- and made everyone stand in line and get frisked. Those who joined the line in '67 are just getting through now. Evil Zionists.

You can read the whole thing here. Sadly, anti-Semitism remains alive and well. It merely changes the words it uses so that it can stay socially acceptable. The Presbyterians should be ashamed of themselves. Maybe someday they will be.

I’ve disliked the Intelligent Design concept since I first heard about it when Behe's book came out. Frankly, to me it seems to be another example of the disreputable idea theologians have referred to as “the God of the gaps” theology. That is, there has been a tendency among many Christians to look at things that they don’t understand, then jump up and down with glee, “see, that proves it: there is a God. God did it.” Unfortunately, as our understanding of the universe advances, this “God” will continue to shrink until he becomes entirely unnecessary (and this, I suspect, is why so many Christians and members of many other faiths fear science: they know that this “God” is likely to be destroyed by it, and that’s the only “God” they have). ID has simply repackaged this foolishness and given it a new name. It reminds me of GTE renaming itself Verizon: it’s still the same bad phone company.

I recently read someone who wrote, in thinking about God, that “since natural laws are His, presumably He can violate them any time He feels like it.” This reflects a widespread assumption regarding omnipotence which I don’t think is correct.

I do not think it is accurate to say that omnipotence means God can do just anything at all. I also disagree, therefore, that “miracle” in any way is a violation of natural law. Hume’s comments on miracle are devastating to that traditional concept of miracle, but only assuming this widely accepted definition of miracle is accurate. At least since the late nineteenth century, most theologians who have thought about the issue have attacked Hume’s conclusions by dismantling this key presupposition (one that most people, unfortunately, still believe) that “miracle” means “violation of natural law.” A more precise definition is that a miracle is a sign, or an intervention by God, by which he hopes to get the viewer’s attention.

Most people would find it difficult to commit murder. Their morality constrains their behavior. Most would argue that God is moral and thus is unable to violate his moral precepts, especially given the additional assumption that God is perfect. What if we now also assume that the laws of nature are as much a part of who God is as the moral laws are? What if we modify the definition of omnipotence to then mean that God is capable of doing anything that is consistent with his nature? God is constrained, I would argue, by his own nature and can do nothing in violation of it; nor do I think that he can do anything that is logically absurd. God can no more make 2 and 2 be 5 than I can.

God then, might no more be able to violate natural law than he is able to violate his moral law. Certainly he does spectacular things, but do those spectacular things require violation of natural law? An airplane would be mighty spectacular to a person living in the middle ages, as would flights to the moon or computers. But none of those spectacular things are violations of natural laws. We simply know the natural laws well and can manipulate them in very creative ways. God, to put it oddly, perhaps, is then simply more technologically advanced than we are. And thus, in a universe where God is like this, science then would be compatible with the nature of reality.

I would expect that we could learn in detail how the universe functions down to the smallest level; I thus am content with evolutionary theory and modern science, though I remain a theist who believes that God is intimately involved with his universe, in that his manipulations are no more intrusive or problematic than the manipulations of his creative creatures and differ from them perhaps in degree, but not kind. I would also point out that God made us free, and thus it is always going to be possible for us to explain Him away, precisely because we would not be free otherwise. How free are you when you are aware that your boss is watching your every move? God didn’t want us to live that way, either.

I suspect that the moral laws and natural laws are both a reflection of God’s fundamental nature and that he cannot be other than who he is. For instance, the fundamental forces (weak force, strong force, gravity, electromagnetism) must exist in a certain relationship with one another—to several decimal places--in order to have a universe capable of supporting life as we know it. We can logically posit universes where the forces are different than in our universe, but such universes would be very uncomfortable for us and incompatible with our existence. God is constrained by 2 and 2 always having to equal four. Likewise, “thou shalt not murder” is probably a necessary constraint on a properly functioning universe, too; anything else would be uncomfortable. While God could have done and could do anything, I believe he is constrained by who he is, just as my behavior is constrained by who I am (such as, what are the odds that I will voluntarily drive on the wrong side of the street, even though the only thing stopping me is a double yellow line painted on the asphalt; hardly a big physical barrier).