Monday music: "Me and Jesus and My Old Guitar," Doyle Dykes

Also check his other stuff

Hither and thither 1/28/11

Pretty brutal-busy week. But I didn't forget you! Here's some fun and so forth. And remember the general words!

• DAOD and BSIL: do not let Timothe see this:

• Yesterday I made a few remarks about the widely touted study supposedly sounding a mental-health "all's clear" for abortion. Dr. Michael New offers (and links to) further criticism of the flawed study.
• Paging Captain Hook. (Poor croc, though.)
• Reader David Miller (and others) noted a gift for an ultimate Star Wars geek... or possibly a serious stewardship issue.
• Well friends, I have a Ted "Golden Voice" Williams update, and it isn't happy. Word is that he's checked out of rehab prematurely. This does not teach us that charity is bad.  It teaches is that liberalism is bad, insofar as it still thinks that the blanket-solution to poverty is to penalize productive people and give freebies to slackers. Man said he was down on his luck. He was given multiple opportunities that other hard-working men would have given a great deal to have. He appears to have blown it. 2 Thessalonians 3:10 is timeless wisdom.
• Building Legos... for a living?
• Boy, that was a strange segue.
• You've heard of Rick Warren's connection to "The Daniel Plan." Reader Robert Sakovich prefers The Sacred Sandwich's Lions' Den Plan.
• From reader/friend John:

• Christian counselor in Britain who was suspended even for suggesting that women seeking abortions might not receive enough information — is now back to work.
• The iPhone: it's a toy, it's a tool, and now it's a weapon in the arsenal of the USA. Who'd have thought it? "Blowing up bad guys? There's an app for that!"
• Verizon iPhone will have a $30/mo unlimited data plan.
• Okay... that looks uncomfortable. (Thanks for the link, Keith.)
• Never, never do this:

• Found a graphic statement of what I was saying last week about Sarah Palin:

• I think that's just... mm, let's see... what's the word I'm searching for? Oh yes, I know: this one.
• ChiCom pianist spits in America's face as Obama looks on in impotent admiration.
• Speaking of whom, President Obama apparently enjoyed earning the title Gun Salesman of the Year in 2009. He is — wait for it — setting his sights on that distinctive again, by once again targeting the Second Amendment rights of Americans.
• Maybe they should just make it against the law to shoot people? Oh, wait....
• This theme keeps occurring to me. I think I've nailed something. If I were a cartoonist, I'd develop something showing a liberal's problem-solving toolbox. It would contain two items: my liberties and my money. Do they ever reach to take anything else? By contrast, a conservative's toolbox might include over-regulation, over-legislation, over-taxation, and anti-Constitutional laws or laxity.
• I will surely not be the first to suggest that Re. Jim Moran's last name is misspelled.
• Microsoft Excel: is it just for spreadsheets. No. Reader Jacob Jaby found a use for Excel that might make my Josiah want to learn it.
• I'm sure our friend Paula had a bad moment when Mike Pence announced he would not seek the presidency in 2012. The 51-year-old youngster may seek the governor's mansion, however; and that's a nice stepping-stone to the presidency.
• Speaking of Paula... what do you think NASA does with your tax dollars? Prepare to return to the Moon? Work on a voyage to Mars? Nahh. Paula found out for us: they're too busy indoctrinating kids into enviro-cultism.
• Some glaciers didn't get the memo.
• Only three or four people will laugh at this. But, like me, they will laugh and laugh and laugh.....

• Fred Butler found a very cool collection of miniatures of various kinds — vehicles, houses, etc.
• More of a serious comment than I wish it were:

• I started with a sort of shout-out to my daughter; now a shout-out to my J's:

• And then finally:

Abortion = happy face! Motherhood = sad face! (It's Scientific)

I should have two new tags: It's Scientific, or Philosophy Matters.

So Alicia Chang, billed as the Associated Press "Science Writer," opens her article thus:

Having an abortion does not increase the risk of mental health problems, but having a baby does, one of the largest studies to compare the aftermath of both decisions suggests.

The research by Danish scientists further debunks the notion that terminating a pregnancy can trigger mental illness and shows postpartum depression to be much more of a factor.

Got that? That means that killing an unborn baby won't hurt you, but giving birth to him might. You know, just in case Alicia's sermon didn't come through clearly enough.

When you read it, you'll instantly have questions about the study, the disparity of groups, the things they did and did not factor in. You'll question whether their method of evaluating mental health was all that sound and objective. Were the subjects reporting on themselves to any degree, and if so isn't that like doing an obesity study by asking the subjects how overweight they feel?

But I have a different approach.

I don't care and it doesn't matter.

Let me be more specific. Suppose there were a study of who had fewer mental health problems, men who murder their wives or men who stay married to them. Or a study of whether adults who committed child molestation or rape were happier than adults who do neither. Suppose the studies showed that murderers/molestors/rapists were happier than non's.

Who would care? Or, perhaps more, what would those studies prove? Would they prove that murder/molesting/rape were good things? Or would they prove that murderers/molestors/rapists were spiritually dead, had warped and damaged consciences, or were liars who did not even know what real joy was?

All those are open questions, aren't they? Without some transcendent, external, objective standard, we're absolutely hopeless to find a moral path.

However,  the study is already premised on a moral path. Its premise is "Whatever makes us happy is good." Of course, my examples above show this to be an inadequate and unlivable basis. Besides, happy for how long? Jumping off a cliff would make me very happy. I'd be flying!

At first.

Any adult realizes that all sorts of short-term "happifiers" are long-term "miserablizers." Might this be one? Might the misery take a year... or ten... or fifty... or a hundred? How can we know?

Plus, even our lost society tends to look down on people who make themselves happy at the cost of others' misery. When we hear that someone has murdered 11 people, our first thought is not, "Well, anyway, at least he's happy, and that's good."

So suppose (just for argument's sake) it really did make a woman happy to have her child killed. Does that make child-killing a good thing? Suppose it made a man happy to have his 1-year-old killed — more happy than if he had the responsibility of caring for him? Would that make the killing a good thing? Would not even our insane society say that the man's happiness is irrelevant?

So, to be very clear: I think women should not contract to have their children killed.

But my reason for thinking this is not that I think the women will be immediately happier if they do not contract to have their children killed. Frankly, as the expression goes, in this equation I could not care less whether she is more or less happy having her child killed. I do want her to be happy; I do not want her to be happy at the cost of another's wrongful death.

So why should a woman not contract to have a child killed, even if the child is really-really imperfect, or really-really inconvenient? Simple: God forbids it, as surely as He forbids rape, murder and theft. She should not contract to have her child killed because it offends God, because the child is created in His image, because an assault on the child is an assault on God, and therefore is attempted Deicide-by-proxy.

But if it makes her happy to contract to have her child killed?

She needs to know for a fact that any happiness she achieves by shaking her fist in God's face will be illusory, short-lived, and ultimately ruinous far out of proportion to any apparent gains her rebellion yielded.

What she — and all of us — needs to be told is not that she can defy God with impunity. This is a lie, and a disastrous one at that.

What she — and all of us — needs to be told is that God has provided one way through which we can know forgiveness of our crimes, and find reconciliation to God. That is the path to true, abiding happiness free from regrets.

AP won't tell you that.

Anyone use and love Spanish textbooks?

I speak Spanish after a fashion, and am supposed to teach my family. We have the texts from Bob Jones Abeka, which have many strengths... and I don't love them. I don't love it all being split up into several books, instead of one. Rosetta Stone did not work for my family. Confusing.

So, have any of you taught or studied with a Spanish textbook and loved it? My preference would be that it be Christian, and that the idiom be Mexican.

Read the post at Pyro

I doubt anyone reads here and not there but, just in case, check out the call for a few good readers over there today.

I got nothing

(Frank did this and got 95143289 comments; we'll see how it works)

It's funny: sometimes ideas and material just gushes like a geyser, and you can barely keep up. Other times... not so much. I have about six half-ideas and a few started posts I can't finish yet.

So... sorry about my lameness.

Hey, I know: Open Mike!

(within the rules)

BW8 upgrade price increase in March

If you've been dragging your feet about upgrading from BW6 or BW7 to BW8, you might want to get the lead out. Upgrade price goes up this March. Read more HERE.

In case nobody told you... I love BibleWorks 8. Have I ever mentioned that?

Monday music: "Little Ones," by Phil Keaggy

Thanks to Paula for this suggestion, timely in view of January 22, that black date in American history (to say nothing of jurisprudence).

For the Biblical teaching regarding abortion, see my The Bible and the Bull's-Eye on the Baby.

Hither and thither 1/21/11

Can lightning strike twice in one week? Let's see!

Oh, and — if you're one of those regular readers who hasn't become a "Follower," join in, using the tool in the side bar.

Now to this week's second offering... and remember the usuals.

• Okay, I might as well put this right up front. There is no way I'm going to be able to explain this but, thanks to reader Keith... We No Speak Americano.
• Deacon Emil Gregorovitch prepared a little too zealously to give a warm embrace during the morning service.

• Is it possible for a knock-knock to be funny? I think so:

Person #1: Knock-knock.
Person #2: Who’s there?
Person #1: Control freak. Now YOU say, “Control freak who?”

• And now...
• For your gustatory delectation, my dear wife has found — bacon salt! Maple-bacon lollipops! Bacon lip balm! And what night of movie-watching would be complete without... bacon popcorn?
• Michael Horton fans will want to know that the Westminster Bookstore has his new systematic theology on sale for 45% for one week.
• Reader Susan found that the Tiger mom's eldest daughter has written an open letter, responding to some of the criticism her mother received.
• Wow! A doctor who kills babies turns out to be a really bad guy! Who could have predicted that? (Reader Pam Sigfriend also points to this article.)
• Another Irony Alert: the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize plays dinner host to the jailer and torturer of the winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. But irony is usually completely lost on doctrinaire liberals.
• Promise-keepers. Tell me again about how there's no difference between the parties?
• Unconvinced? I think I'm in love, ideologically-speaking: the House GOP's Republican Study Committee just yesterday unveiled a plan that would mean $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years. It is a proposal for consideration by the House. The more I read it, the more I love it. However, voters failed to put the Senate back in the hands of Constitutionally-oriented adults, so its prospects there at present would be iffy at best. Could frame a beauty of a debate, though, if handled right.
• Good news, if you can believe it: Gallup reports that conservative Americans outnumber liberal Americans in all but three states — and those three are a tie. Part of the trouble seems to be that some of those conservatives are Democrats who don't get that they're in the wrong party.
• When Democrats/MSM plead for "civility," don't drink the Kool Aid. They don't mean it. They're just out of power, and it makes them cranky. Plus, they're counting on a really stupid populace. On which subject...
• Remember I once pointed you to a civic literacy test? Now reader Gabby started me looking for the results. They're not good for citizens at large... and even worse for elected officials.
• And, again, relatedly....
• Profiles in Abject, Barking Idiocy. Texas Dem Representative Sheila Jackson Lee is famous (among other things) for asking whether the Mars rover had taken a picture of the flag... planted on the moon. (Which is an entirely different heavenly body.)  Now she has distinguished herself and the geniuses who sent her to Washington by arguing that repeal of the statist health-care takeover violates the Constitution. Yes, that's right. Specifically (Professor Lee informs us) it violates the Fifth Amendment, because it means people will die — without police-state health care.
• Dwell on that, er, logic, Gentle Reader. Even leave aside the concerns of this pro-abort woman for loss of life, or even the assumption that, if our Overlords don't provide, we are helpless. Think of other amendments. Think of the First Amendment: right to freedom of speech. But don't I need internet access to make my voice heard? If the State doesn't provide me with internet access, then, am I not equally being denied my First Amendment rights? Or, if the State won't build me a church and pay a minister for me, am I not equally being robbed freedom to worship? Or think again of the Second Amendment. Won't people actually die because they don't have guns with which to protect themselves? So, if the State doesn't provide me with weaponry, isn't it equally denying me my Second Amendment rights?
• Now here is a beautiful irony. It is doubtless not coincidental that Rep. Lee's district becomes the first in the nation to host a black Tea Party group, 
• Sadly, back to foolish statements, we have a runner-up in Rep. John Lewis, himself the source of other lamentable oracles in the past. Now he rises to link statist health care as a right guaranteed by the Constitution under the "pursuit of happiness" clause. There y'go.
• Problem? You're BibChr readers. You already know: that isn't in the Constitution, genius.
• I'm starting to think that it was a kindness that the GOP made Dems read the Constitution. I'm also thinking that it didn't take.
• Now to do a complete circle close, combining blacks, abortion, Obama and the Constitution as only BibChr HT's can do it. To wit:
• Former senator Rick Santorum is a very poor guest host for Bill Bennett. He's boring, he stammers, he loses me every time. But he's also dead-right about abortion, when he says this:

“I find it almost remarkable for a black man [such as President Obama] to say, no, we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.

“Every person, every child conceived in the womb has a right to life from the moment of conception. Why? Because they are human, genetically human, at the moment of conception,” said Santorum. “They have the same genetic composition as you and I do from that moment on. And it's alive...so it's a human life.

“...When Barack Obama is asked is a child in the womb a human life? [He says,] 'Oh, well, that's above my pay grade.' Just about everything else in the world he's willing to do, to have the government do, but he can't answer that basic question. ...The question is--and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer--is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well, if that person, human life, is not a person, then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, no, we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.”

• Predictably, the boring man's should-be-commonsense words stirred up a bit of a storm.
• Chris Carney found us some cool food art.
• Staying with food: tacos... with lion meat. I'd try one.
• Robert Sakovich found a Lego Mona Lisa.
• This is also what it sounds like when Dad reads while sleepy:

• Senator Joe Lieberman will not run again (reporter can't spell "Ecclesiastes," heh) for Senate. Good riddance. Never has reputation and reality known a greater gulf, except perhaps with Senator Robert Byrd. Being known as the "conscience of the Senate" is a pretty damning assessment of that august body. Someone wisely observed that Lieberman was always wrestling with his conscience, and his conscience always loses. His great "legacy" will be that he single-handedly kept Bill Clinton's pasty-white self in the Oval Office, after the latter had committed perjury and sexually used a subordinate in the White House.
• Now, the Timothe Allen section. Some of you have asked for more news and pix of my dear grandson. He's doing great, can't wait to grow up. Has a tooth! Last night, Timothe took a few steps toward Grandpa several times, to thunderous applause. Now, first, an older (but adorable) picture of the li'l cub:

• Now a couple more recent pix. Boy loves his Grandma's cooking!

• So Wednesday, you read about the lying homosexual in England who is trying to get a Christian counselor's license revoked for trying to help him when he asked for help. Now we read some say that Britain is becoming an unfriendly place for Christians. Imagine that.
• The phenomenon of Palinoia continues to receive analysis. Why does Sarah Palin elicit such vicious, unhinged, visceral hatred?  Jedediah Bila analyzes the can't-win scenario that is Palin's public life, and opines that it because she is an ordinary person who has succeeded on her own, is happy, and has retained her values. Then there's James Taranto, whose lengthier analysis (pointed out to me by Joel Griffith) concludes that snarlin'-mad Palin hatred is generating from women, specifically liberal women — specifically jealousy that "threatens their sexualidentity, which is bound up with their politics in a way that it is not for any other group."
• Me? I don't doubt there is truth in both analyses. But what explains white elitist males? Taranto would say that they want to impress liberal women. Possible. Here's what I think applies in very many (not all) cases: it's because Palin is effective, happy, unapologetic, and on-offense. I think that the popular image of conservatives (especially Christians) is that, when we come under criticism, we're all supposed to curl up into a ball, whimper, and apologize for existing. Above all, we're expected to take our abuse in silence. Palin not only does none of those things, but her response usually actually moves the opposition back a yard or two. This drives liberals batty, and provokes creampuffs to fear the wrath (or, worse, disdain) of their overlords.

• And:

• Alabama governor Robert Bentley, in church, says that fellow-Christians are his brothers in Christ, others aren't, he hopes they will be. Of course, panic and terror erupt, outrage all around. The governor apologizes. I'd just want to ask the offended: so, do you want the Governor to say you are his brother in Christ? No? Then what's the problem.
• The problem is that Christians aren't supposed to be Christians out-loud, in public. You knew that.
• No problem being a self-absorbed Native American"-whatever  guy in public, though. Franklin Graham says Jesus' name is being scoffed at. I say it's hated and feared.
• Meanhile, reader James Joyce notes that Deepak Chopra will be running Canada Post. (Not that Deepak Chopra, I think.)
• Sonja notes that the Cheezburger guy is doing pretty well for himself.
• Muslim logic?  Tank-top = modest. Shorts = modest. No hijab? Gasp! Immodest! (Thanks, Paula.)
• Oh my. Reader Kerry Garrett found us something that might even be worse than the Star Wars Holiday Special. It's... it's... the Donny and Marie Osmond Star Wars!
• Leading to these parting images:

Hither and thither 1/19/11

Surprise!

Aw, heck, you know sometimes Christmas just comes a little early.

Turns out I have so much right now that I figure Friday would be too long, by the time it came. So here you are. It may mean Friday's short... but I've got a back-up plan in that case. So enjoy! Tell your friends.

And hey — if you haven't "Followed" the blog, now's a good day. Use the tool over in the side-bar, and join the family.

And remember the usuals.

• A cautionary note: posing for the camera is nice... but safety first!

• Courtesy of reader Squirrel, Lego enthusiasts can read about the man who built a model of the Ohio stadium from Legos.
• So: a person says he's a Christian struggling to be free from temptations to a vile sexual perversion. He asks a Christian counselor for help. She tries to help. Surprise, he was lying! And he sues her! And he tries to get her license revoked! And he gets an award for it! Quick: name that perversion. Aw go on, try: think of folks always thinking of what's best for society at large... then reverse it. Try.
• Related: in Britain, apparently one can't even ask commonsense questions or make commonsense observations in public without an outcry. Don't sneer, fellow-American: we're on that same path being headed in that same direction.
• Necessary periodic clarification: Very seriously: I have all the sympathy in the world for Christians who are struggling with temptation, including temptation to any vile passion. I am dead-serious about that. Ah, but: the key word = "struggling." I have zero sympathy for anyone embracing such perversion and trying to force approval on everyone else. Clear?
• Kinda nice... this post at Pyro is sending folks to this article on the web page, and some are (with permission) reposting that: like here. Tomorrow's The Boys' turn.
• Ah yes, everything looks good on the drawing-board:

• Answer: this year! Question: when will extended LOTR come out on Blu-Ray?
• This is terrific: boiling water insta-freezing in the freezing Canadian cold. The reported temperature is about 22 below zero, Fahrenheit. Thanks to reader Jon Hall.
• Oopsie. Reader Chris Carney noticed that the school calendar for the European Union was... interesting in its selection of holidays. Let's see... the Sikh holiday of Baisakhi-Day? Check. Jewish Yom Kippur? Check. Muslim holiday Aid-el-Kebir. Check. Christian Christmas? Easter? Um... oopsie.
• Related-ish-ly, reader Gil Sebenste, who is a meteorologist, found that there is a re-education program from the National Science Foundation, to get weathermen on-board for "global warming." Chilling, eh?
• Don't show my boys; they might not think my burgers are so cool anymore.

• Last week we had some comments over the article on Chinese mothers. Readers will enjoy this video, courtesy of the Bayly bros.
• Reader Ken Abbott found that George Lucas says Harold Camping is all wrong about the world ending in May of 2011. No no no no! It's actually going to end in 2012. (Lucas has since said it was all a joke, heh heh heh.)
• Amish just want to have fun, too.

• This looks at the same time and in equal proportions extremely fun, and terrifyingly unstable.
• Title of the Week: How to Eat Roadkill. My response: don't.
• Finally: