Jim West found a site on the web, www.howmanyofme.com, which allows you to discover how many other people in the United States have the same name you do. According to this site, no one has my name, which is of course silly, since I know I exist. I can see myself in the mirror over there, and I do have a birth certificate around here somewhere.

I did discover some interesting statistics from the site regarding my first name (of course the accuracy is in question, since the site screwed up on my very existence):

There are 359,962 people in the U.S. with the first name Robin.

Statistically the 160th most popular first name.

86.67 percent of people with the first name Robin are female.

I aleady knew the issue with my first name, that most people with it were female. I realized that somewhere around the time I started getting tampon samples in the mail. Not really something a thirteen year old boy wants to be getting in the mail, I assure you. Once I got married, at least I could give them to my wife instead of tossing them in the trash.

This is why my books and articles always have "R.P. Nettelhorst" as my byline. I prefer to use my initials when I am not dealing with people face to face. I don't want folks to simply assume I'm not the gender I actually am due to the non-sexist nature of my first name. I am a man. I even have a beard to prove it. Just look at my picture on the back of my books or the front of my best selling story, Moon Over Aiyalon.

I dislike Daylight Savings Time. A lot. I would really prefer that we not have to change the clocks twice a year and to lose an hour's sleep in the Spring. I simply don't see the value of mucking with everyone's sleep schedules and inducing nationwide "jet lag" twice a year. I can't see how that can be good for productivity.

According to Wikipedia's article on the subject, Benjamin Franklin introduced the concept in 1784 in a letter to the editors of the Journal of Paris. However, the article says that his letter was satirical. I hope so. I rather like Ben Franklin and would prefer to think that he never came up with such a bad idea. Of course, he also stood out in the rain waiting for his kite to be struck by lightening, so he wasn't exactly a stranger to bad ideas.

Moon Over Aiyalon had dropped off the best seller list last Monday. But then, for awhile, over this weekend (Saturday and Sunday), it popped back on. So I guess I sold another short story.

I have no idea how many copies sold it takes to arrive on the Amazon Shorts best seller list; I know that my story has remained on the genre specific list for science fiction short stories all week. It's only on the main list that it has come and gone and come again.

But until I see my first accounting from Amazon, I have no idea what their ranking system really means. My pessimistic nature is to imagine that I've sold but three stories so far.

My grip on reality is probably about as firm as that of the new hire who decides he's a failure since he's been working since nine, it's lunch time, and he hasn't gotten paid yet.

Today my short story Moon Over Aiyalon hit Amazon's best seller list for Amazon Shorts. It got as high as number 19 on the list, but it's dropping now. I have no idea what that means so far as the actual number of sales goes.

I guess, in some very minor way, I'm a best selling author now. Heh.

UPDATE:

As of 8:30 PM Pacific Time, I had moved up to 18 on the best seller list. The list seems to be very volatile. Moon Over Aiyalon has been as low as 60 on the list, I noticed when I checked around noon today. I do wish I knew what this means so far as number of units sold.

During the month of September, my pastor, Don Patterson, asked me to do a four part series of seminars on Sunday evening entitled Islam: Theology and History. The first two of those seminars are now available online on our church's website. Just click the seminar title above to go there. The video quality isn't so good. It was our first time trying to do something like this.

My short story Moon Over Aiyalon is now available from Amazon.com as part of their Amazon Shorts program. It only costs 49 cents to download and read it. Amazon takes 60 per cent, I get 40 per cent.

What's the story about? Being a graduate student is always hard. Especially if your name is Yehudah and your advisor, a professor named Nahor, invents a time machine that he decides to test on you. Moon Over Aiyalon is a humorous story told in first person about an Israeli sideways time machine that proves remarkably effective in countering terrorists.

New Exo-Planet Discovered

NASA has reported that there is a Jupiter mass planet around Epsilon Eridani, only 10.5 light years from Earth:

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, in collaboration with ground-based observatories, has provided definitive evidence for the existence of the nearest extrasolar planet to our solar system.

The Jupiter-sized world orbits the Sun-like star Epsilon Eridani, which is only 10.5 light-years away (approximately 63 trillion miles). The planet is so close it may be observable by Hubble and large ground-based telescopes in late 2007, when the planet makes its closest approach to Epsilon Eridani during its 6.9-year orbit.

The Hubble observations were achieved by a team led by G. Fritz Benedict and Barbara E. McArthur of the University of Texas at Austin. The observations reveal the the planet's true mass, which the team has calculated to be 1.5 times Jupiter's mass.

Hubble also found that the planet's orbit is tilted 30 degrees to our line of sight, which is the same inclination as a disk of dust and gas that also encircles Epsilon Eridani. This is a particularly exciting result because, although it has long been inferred that planets form from such disks, this is the first time that the two objects have been observed around the same star.

Additionally, the release stated:

Although Hubble and other telescopes cannot image the gas giant planet now, they may be able to snap pictures of it in 2007, when its orbit is closest to Epsilon Eridani. The planet may be bright enough in reflected starlight to be imaged by Hubble, other space-based cameras, and large ground-based telescopes.

For Star Trek fans, Epsilon Eridani is interesting because that star was at one time proposed as the the one around which orbits the homeworld of Mr. Spock: Vulcan. Now, however, it is generally thought that in the fictional universe of Star Trek, Eridani 40, 16 light years from Earth, is the actual homeworld of the Vulcans.

Freedom of Action in Space

A new U.S. national space policy has been issued. The unclassified version is available in PDF.

MSNBC.com reports:

The new policy supports not only an exploration agenda for the moon, Mars and beyond, but also responds to the post-9/11 world of terrorist actions, such as the need for intelligence-gathering internal and external to the United States.

U.S. assets must be unhindered in carrying out their space duties, the Bush space policy says, stressing that “freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power.” ....

The White House document spells out U.S. space policy goals, including the implementation of a sustained “innovative human and robotic exploration program” geared to extending human presence across the solar system.

As a civil space guideline, the policy calls upon NASA to “execute a sustained and affordable human and robotic program of space exploration and develop, acquire, and use civil space systems to advance fundamental scientific knowledge of our Earth system, solar system, and universe.”

The Bush space policy supports use of space nuclear power systems to “enable or significantly enhance space exploration or operational capabilities.” The document adds that utilization of nuclear power systems “shall be consistent with U.S. national and homeland security, and foreign policy interests, and take into account the potential risks.”

White & Nerdy

Music video by "Weird Al" Yankovic from the album "Straight Outta Lynwood"

The Brussels Journal has an interesting article that begins:

“The Jihad, the Islamic so-called Holy War, has been a fact of life in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East for more than 1300 years, but this is the first history of the Muslim wars in Europe ever to be published. Hundreds of books, however, have appeared on its Christian counterpart, the Crusades, to which the Jihad is often compared, although they lasted less than two hundred years and unlike the Jihad, which is universal, were largely but not completely confined to the Holy Land. Moreover, the Crusades have been over for more than 700 years, while a Jihad is still going on in the world. The Jihad has been the most unrecorded and disregarded major event of history. It has, in fact, been largely ignored. For instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the Crusades eighty times more space than the Jihad.”

The quote is from Paul Fregosi’s book Jihad in the West from 1998. Mr. Fregosi found that his book about the history of Islamic Holy War in Europe from the 7th to the 20th centuries was difficult to get published in the mid-1990s, when publishers had the Salman Rushdie case in fresh memory.

Read the whole thing.

My science fiction publisher has finalized the title and cover for my next book; it will be called Inheritance.

This is my publisher's description of it:

Paul Wilcox is 83 years old. When his friend invites him to visit an unusual archaeological site in Lebanon, he never suspects that it will change his life. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of an advanced human civilization wiped out over a hundred thousand years ago in a biological war when the first virus was created from scratch and unleashed on the world. All the viruses known to humanity have their origins in an ancient weapon of war gone haywire.

But that is not the only wonder uncovered; an advanced computer from that ancient time still exists and gives Paul a secret that will change his life — and the lives of everyone else in the world — more than any other secret from the past: the secret to eternal youth.

The ebook is currently available; the paperback should be out in time for the Christmas buying season. Just click on the title above to take a look.

Israel gets blamed for a lot of nasty things. One common accusation and criticism is that they have acted genocidally against Moslems. And it is true, that since their War of Independence in 1948, about 60,000 Moslems have died in the various Israeli-Arab conflicts, including the two Intafadas and the War in Lebanon. However, in the same time period, France has been responsible for killing about half a million Moslems, while the Russians have killed about a million. And Moslem countries, while they've criticized and fought against Israel, have killed about 8.5 million Muslims all by themselves. But somehow, for some reason, the world only criticizes the Jews. I wonder why?

A quote from an article in Ma'ariv:

The tragedy is that in Arab and Muslim countries a massacre is happening. A genocide protected by the silence of the world. A genocide protected by a deception that is perhaps unparalleled in the history of mankind. A genocide that has no connection to Israel, to Zionism or to Jews. A genocide of mainly Arabs and Muslims, by Arabs and Muslims.

This is not a matter of opinion or viewpoint. This is the result of factual examination, as precise as possible, of the numbers of victims of various wars and conflicts that have taken place since the establishment of the State of Israel up till this time, in which the massacre continues. It is, indeed, death on a massive scale. A massacre. It is the wiping out of villages and cities and whole populations. And the world is silent. The Muslims are indeed abandoned. They are murdered and the world is silent. And if it bothers to open its mouth, it doesn’t complain about the murderers. It doesn’t complain about the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity. It complains about Israel.

Take a look at this rather lengthy article published originally in Hebrew and translated by the blogger at Not A Fish.

Oh, and keep in mind an important point: Israel has a free press. Ma'ariv is one of dozens of daily papers in the Jewish state. Not something one can say about most of the Moslem countries who might want to criticize.

I do get the feeling that many people in the West do not understand the problem. Clifford D. May states the uncomfortable situation for the West well:

Many commentators have noted the apparent irony: The pope suggests Islam encourages violence — and Muslims riot in protest.

Many commentators have pointed out the apparent hypocrisy: Muslims are outraged by cartoons satirizing Islamic extremism while in Muslim countries Christianity and Judaism are attacked viciously and routinely.

Many commentators are missing the point: These protesters — and those who incite them — are not asking for mutual respect and equality. They are not saying: “It’s wrong to speak ill of a religion.” They are saying: “It’s wrong to speak ill of our religion.” They are not standing up for a principle. They are laying down the law. They are making it as clear as they can that they will not tolerate “infidels” criticizing Muslims. They also are making it clear that infidels should expect criticism — and much worse — from Muslims.

They are attempting nothing less than the establishment of a new world order in which the supremacy of what they call the Nation of Islam is acknowledged, and “unbelievers” submit — or die. Call it an offer you can’t refuse....

....Imad Hamto, a Palestinian religious leader, said: “We want to use the words of the Prophet Muhammad and tell the pope: ‘Aslim Taslam’” The Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh explained: “Aslim Taslam is a phrase that was taken from the letters sent by the Prophet Muhammad to the chiefs of tribes in his times in which he reportedly urged them to convert to Islam to spare their lives.”

It is not only those readily identified as extremists who voice such views. The prime minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, seemed to strike a conciliatory note, saying that the Pope’s expression of regret for his remarks was “acceptable.” But he added: “[W]e hope there are no more statements that can anger the Muslims.”

Similarly, on National Public Radio, a George Washington University professor, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, argued that statements such as those quoted by the pope — expressing sentiments some Muslims may find offensive — must be viewed as a form of violence.

Is the Western ideal of freedom of speech and of the press threatened? Of course but that’s only part of what is at work here. More significantly, Americans and Europeans are being relegated to the status of a dhimmi — the Arabic word applied to those conquered by Muslim armies between the 7th and 17th centuries. Based on shari’a law, dhimmis are meant to “feel themselves subdued,” to acknowledge their inferiority compared to Muslims.

In some ways, we already have done so. For example, Muslims are welcome in the Vatican, even as Christians are banned from setting foot in Mecca. We do not object to Saudis building mosques in America and Europe, even as they prohibit churches and synagogues on Arabian soil.

Getting back to science fiction, something that I enjoy a great deal. I've been engrossed in a series of books begun by Eric Flint, the first of which is entitled 1632. You can easily get it at Amazon.com.Flint posits a temporal accident set in motion by aliens winds up sending a small chunk of West Virginia back to 17th century Germany in the middle of the 30 Years War. The chunk happens to encompass an entire town made up of good old boys and girls who set out to bring American ideals of liberty and justice to the Middle Ages. Fun ensues. It is a good story and a great series of books, still in the process of being written and published. I highly recommend them.

From a column in the Washington Post:

Today's Islamists seem to have not even a sense of irony. They fail to see the richness of the following sequence. The pope makes a reference to a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's remark about Islam imposing itself by the sword, and to protest this linking of Islam and violence:

· In the West Bank and Gaza, Muslims attack seven churches.

· In London, the ever-dependable radical Anjem Choudary tells demonstrators at Westminster Cathedral that the pope is now condemned to death.

· In Mogadishu, Somali religious leader Abubukar Hassan Malin calls on Muslims to "hunt down" the pope. The pope not being quite at hand, they do the next best thing: shoot dead, execution-style, an Italian nun who worked in a children's hospital.

"How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I'll kill you for it" is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge. But of course, refuting is not the point here. The point is intimidation.

The whole article is well worth reading.

Besides doing my customary rewriting today, I also busied myself with things relating to the new server that the Quartz Hill School of Theology website has been moved to (thanks to Rick Curtis). We are in the process of adding various bells and whistles. For instance, the Aeropagus, our bulletin board/discussion forum is being completely redone. At the moment, it is still being put together and the look of it is not quite what we'd like, but it does function just fine. Eventually we'll link it to the home page of the site, and in a more obvious manner than it's former incarnation. If you'd like a preview, take a look now at the new Areopagus

I set the new DNS for our new server yesterday with Educause, the organization in charge of handling the .edu domain on the web. But not all ISPs had updated their DNS list yet, as of the time I was writing this--for instance, MY ISP hasn't updated yet (grumble) and it has been more than 24 hours. I've read it can take 3 to 4 days for the change to a new server to propagate through the internet.

Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe writes about Islam:

This time it was a 14th-century quote from a Byzantine ruler that set off -- or rather, was exploited by Islamist firebrands to ignite -- the international demonstrations, death threats, and violence. Earlier this year it was cartoons about Mohammed in a Danish newspaper. Last year it was a Newsweek report, later debunked, that a Koran had been descecrated by a US interrogator in Guantanamo. Before that it was Jerry Falwell's comment on ``60 Minutes" that Mohammed was a ``terrorist." Back in 1989 it was the publication of Salman Rushdie's satirical novel, ``The Satanic Verses."

In every case, the pretext for the Muslim rage was the claim that Islam had been insulted. Freedom of speech was irrelevant: While the rioters and those inciting them routinely insult Christianity, Judaism, and other religions, they demand that no one be allowed to denigrate Islam or its prophet. It is a staggering double standard, and too many in the West seem willing to go along with it. Witness the editorials in US newspapers this week scolding the pope for his speech. Recall the State Department's condemnation of the Danish cartoons last winter.

Of course nobody's faith should be gratuitously affronted. But the real insult to Islam is not a line from a papal speech or a cartoon about Mohammed. It is the violence, terror, and bloodshed that Islamist fanatics unleash in the name of their religion -- and the unwillingness of most of the world's Muslims to say or do anything to stop them.

And, as of about 5:30 PM, the website and mailserver seem to be back up and running. Thank you Rick!

UPDATE 8:30 PM
The new server is up, but at the moment www.theology.edu will still take you to the old sever until we change the DNS; the site has been uploaded onto the new server and all seems to be functioning fine, except for the Google ads, which have the old formatting problem. Doubtless we'll get that fixed soon. So the new server should go live within a day or so I think. Users should notice nothing different, at least at first. But there will be some enhancements coming...

Once again the Quartz Hill School of Theology has suffered a spam attack, taking the website and our email server down around 6 AM this morning. On the bright side, Rick Curtis is even now busy transferring the site to a new machine that should have better security and keep this from happening to us again. So the site should be back soon, better than ever.

Interesting. Some complained about cutting taxes, and yet an interesting tidbit:

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. government recorded record-high overall and corporate tax receipts on Sept. 15, which was a quarterly deadline for tax payments, the Treasury said Monday.
Total tax receipts were $85.8 billion on Friday, compared with the previous one-day record of $71 billion on Sept. 15 of last year, the Treasury said.
Within the overall figure, corporate tax receipts Friday were $71.8 billion, up from $63 billion in September of last year.
Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance Randal Quarles said Friday's numbers provided a "continuing demonstration of the strength of the U.S. economy."
"In fact, Friday's gross receipts were the largest in a single day in the nation's history - 20% higher than receipts on the same quarterly tax payment date last year," Quarles said in a statement.
-By Benton Ives-Halperin, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9255; Benton.Ives-Halperin@dowjones.com

Do you suppose that Laffer fellow knew what he was talking about after all?