Friday, May 27, 2011

Hither and thither 5/27/11

My big news for the moment is that I got what should be my final pre-typesetting version of the Proverbs manuscript back to Rick Kress, the publisher. The hope is to have it available at the start of September. What a nice birthday-present!

Very full week and day, but still I culled this just for you:
  • Wait... what just happened?
  • Carmen Siekierke pointed me to yet another appalling example of federal government tyranny. A Missouri family began raising rabbits to teach their son responsibility and industry. They earned a reputation for raising fine rabbits. They did a small business, turning a profit of $200 a year. Not much, eh? Enough to attract the malign attention of some restlessly intrusive USDA agents, who decided to demand ninety thousand dollars as a settlement (which they clearly regard as generously low), payable by May 23, last Monday. If the family doesn't pay, fines could go up to $4 million.
  • I'll say it again. Raise one of the men who died to free us from King George and show him our lives, and he'd ask who conquered us, and when.
  • Reached for a comment, Michelle Obama remarked...
  • So what would you make of a law that makes it a misdemeanor for people to touch "the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of another person including through the clothing," with possibity of arrest and a $4000 fine for violation? Sounds reasonable to me. Does not sound reasonable to the TSA, however, who threatened Texas if they passed the law — and Texas backed down. Sad, sad days.
  • Now for a chuckle, some vintage Mark Steyn from 1998: "If Oprah were to endorse a self-help book called How to Stop Buying Books Just because Your Favorite TV Host Recommends Them, You Pathetic, Craven Loser, it would be an instant best-seller."
  • Oh my; Sacred Sandwich scores big yet again:
  • Sigh.  Ecclesiastes 8:12 vs. this.
  • Harold Camping. If you're one of those dainty souls who doesn't want to be too hard on the old man for what he did: watch this and this. Watch Camping grin and chuckle and shrug off responsibility for his false teaching. Watch him smilingly shrug off the lives he's wrecked, say they should just trust God, work harder, do without, they'll be fine. Watch him repeatedly congratulate himself for being humbler than almost any preacher he's ever known, because he admitted that he made a mistake. (See? It's really a good thing!)

  • Combining two BibChr constants: Legos and gummis = WIN.
  • (I figure the fact that it's from Greenpeace puts it pretty near fiction, anyway.)
  • Important Safety Tip: when you set off a bomb in a quarry, stand far away:
  • Staying with Legos, check out this massive Garrison of Moriah that an enthusiast built. (Thanks, Merrilee)
  • Lego fans: have you seen this page? (From the previous article.)
  • You'll enjoy this passel of Star Wars propaganda posters.
  • ONOES!! A Christian doctor at a Christian practice with a Christian name commends Christ to a patient... and he's in big trouble! Because it's in England, where such things are evidently not done.
  • Someone was tired of fixing the bridge over and over and over and over and...
  • If you're a regular reader, you know how thoroughly I don't mean this seriously — but I swear, sometimes I feel like parenting should require a license. Like these idiots, raising a "gender-free" child. DENIED! Poor kid, named "Storm," joins hapless sibs "Jazz" and "Kio." I kid you not. (Thx Aaron)
  • Relatedly?
  • Homeschoolers (and others): this is some interesting but rather harrowing footage of food's journey, all the way from the mouth to the, er, large intestine. I watched it while eating, and do not recommend you do the same.
  • Wondering how I should celebrate, when my books "hit the stands," as it were. Hmm.....
  • Well... he did get the ball.
  • Grumbly about your kids? Read this story. Poor woman. Sometimes it's good to step back and get perspective. (Thx Aaron)
  • Feel very clever if you "get" this:
  • Here's something better than that: Calvin's Institutes on Kindle for $0.89 (h-t Challies).
  • Well, that's it. I know, I know — I know how you feel when you come to the end of the week's H&T. You feel like...
  • So take additional comfort in these:






29 comments:

JackW said...

Like they haven't figured out that if you are clever enough to get it you probably own an iPhone already.

Anonymous said...

We heard about the family selling the rabbits at church during prayer time this Lord's day. Ridiculous.

David Regier said...

Great. We're already trying to keep Legos out of the 2-year-old's mouth.

Chris H said...

I feel slightly unnerved by the last comment about the usuals; like I'm living in some sort of Owellian state.

Lynda O said...

Yes, so sad about that genderless kid story -- people following the bad fiction stuff from the early '70s. Public schools can also be blamed for this -- that story about child X was a short-story read to us in 5th grade, and I've seen references online to other teachers since then reading it to their classes.

The story actually made it all sound very great and benign, how the child X was good at both boy and girl activities and how they solved all the questions and problems, like having the child use the bathroom in the principal's office... and in the story of course the X child was socially adapted and normal.

Scot said...

The first video of Camping, a female reporter at 2:10 cuts straight to the issue, "You say the Bible is difficult to interpret and understand, so how can you in good conscience say the world is going to end on October 21 when you've already been proven to wrong once?"

Answer: "Hummanna hummmanna hummanna hummanna everyone's wrong at times."

Watching these videos is truly like seeing Proverbs leap off the pages of Scripture and smack you in the face.

As to the gender-less parents: AHHHHHHH! AHHHHH! AHHHHHHH! I'd be sooooo thankful later in life that my parents came up with a cute name for "it". Seriously, the older boys already act like girls and the parents say they want to let the children discover and learn for themselves. As if the parents think they can throw a barrier between their norms and habits to prevent from influencing their children. You can no more repeat that nonsense than yell at the sun for being too warm and too bright.

Actually Dan the screaming animals is how I feel about some of the folks in the articles this week. Don't hear me saying you shouldn't have posted them, it's just maddening to hear and read this.

For relief, I will stare at the cat in the couch until I smile again.

Aaron said...

Two things:

IF we brought a founding father to life we'd have to explain how we were unwilling to make any sacrifices to keep what they sacrificed to give us. That's why we are where we are.

Second, how do these government people in the rabbit story sleep at night? I work for the Fed and if they told me to do that, I'd quit.

RT said...

Referring to the genderless parents as "idiots" is awfully kind. Idiots they certainly are, but pathologically fatuous as well. Their children would be better off raised according to Mark Twain's famous method -- keep them in an empty whiskey barrel until age 12, passing food in through the bung hole. "What do you do when they turn 12?"

Hammer in the bung!

Lest you feel the need for another disclaimer I will hasten to add that even if Twain wasn't kidding, I am -- but in a very sad vein you just have to ask yourself what in the world will our society look like when products of this kind of mind-numbing idiocy are allowed to reach maturity without intervention. I guess the same freedom that allows you to home school has to allow morons like this to "unschool." One can only hope that this is not part of a trend and one can only pray for these poor neglected children.

REM said...

Camping and MSM are meant for each other. He feeds off of the megaphone they provide and they feed off of someone who perpetuates their stereotype of "Christian" to a t.

jmb said...

Speaking of Oprah, here's what Jada Pinkett-Smith recently said to her:

"I want to thank you for the 25 years that you have given us. We have traveled many roads with you. You have enlightened us, you have empowered us and you have taught us how to be," Jada says. "I know you don't have children of your own, but you have mothered millions. And I just want to tell you that right now, Mama, that puts you in the status of a goddess."

Brad Williams said...

Wait, is that rabbit story for real? Seriously?

I'm going to tell my dad to quit selling eggs.

Anonymous said...

The iPhone has no flash? As in, for the camera?

Otherwise, I don't get it.

Joe Cassada said...

I do feel clever!

Herding Grasshoppers said...

Those parents just make my blood boil. We have some a LITTLE like that in our neighborhood, but not nearly so extreme.

Though I (obviously) support homeschooling, I find it interesting that when they asked the oldest "boy" if he wanted to go to public school, he seemed well aware that his oddness would make life unpleasant for him.

But of course, that's because everyone else is so messed up. *sigh*

Paula Bolyard said...

Of course, what always follows in these cases is a call to regulate homeschooling and send social workers to check on the children.

EEERG! I got my new Kindle today and have spent the last 1/2 hour trying to figure out how to get Calvin's Institutes. I know it's not supposed to be this difficult (or slow).

Merrilee Stevenson said...

Long day, leading into a long weekend. So glad I can relate to the screaming animals.

What I cannot relate to is the couple who seem to assume their children will live in a gender-free society when they grow up. What if those boys wanted to become fathers? How would the parents explain to them what to look for in a spouse? I was disheartened when reading some comments in the article because so many people were in support of the silliness. But considering the name of the website, not surprised.

Also in the disappointed category: Texas. I wish they had called the TSA's bluff. It needs to go to another level. If not Texas, then where?

Happy Memorial Day Weekend everywhere. We'll be celebrating my favorite mandolin player and 100% boy--Tristan Marc Stevenson--turning 8.

Wendy said...

I think I am not so clever. But I might have to blame my lack of superhero knowledge rather than my iPhone skills. Who are those people?

Why do parents think that if they don't pass on Christian/religious "ideologies" to their children, then they won't be passing on *any* ideologies?

P.S. Dan, your shopping bag was looking quite small; you tellin' us you don't buy American Girl for your boys? ;)

GrammaMack said...

"The hope is to have it available at the start of September. What a nice birthday-present!"

Not sure if this means that your birthday is today or in September, but either way, happy birthday! And congratulations!

Susan said...

Oh. My. Goodness. I'm reading that article about the parents' decision to raise their children genderless (well, their third child's gender is a secret to most), and the whole thing is disturbing enough--until I come to the clincher:

"Then there are gender 'smoothies,' who have a blended sense of gender that is purely 'them.'"

"Gender smoothies"???? Are we talking about kids or Jamba Juice??? These parents think they are giving their kids freedom to discover who they are (the way they're doing it), but they're actually imprisoning them because the eldest one is already experiencing ostracism from others. Do they realize they are possibly raising children to be sociopaths??

Aaron said...

@Susan: It's just another example of mankind's innate wickedness. People just don't realize the happiness that comes from embracing the roles God made us for.

Susan said...

True, Sir Aaron. The seemingly ironic truth is that when we submit to the Lord, we find true freedom to be who we were designed to be. It kind of reminds me of what Jesus said--that whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will find it.

And your point about man's innate wickedness leads to another thought: If this kind of "un-schooling" continues without intervention or change of heart, the children will "play out" their innate depravity as they grow older even if outsiders don't openly ostracize them (unlikely, though). Where will these parents set their boundaries?

Aaron said...

Susan:

I think you already know the answer to that question. Discipline is not an important feature of progressive parental theory.

Dan said...

Dan, could you provide a link for Obama sending stimulus money to tax cheats? Thanks.
-Dan

DJP said...

There's a link in the article, Dan. Click the hypertext.

Dan said...

Thanks, don't know why I didn't see it before.

DJP said...

Not your fault, Dan; somehow the link had dropped off. I restored it.

Susan said...

Well, Sir Aaron, I guess what I was thinking was how far these parents will go (as if they haven't gone far enough!). For example, suppose their children started to beat up each other. One would think that even these parents would break up the fight and pursue some sort of disciplinary action (if not for the children, then for their own peace and quiet in the household!). Would they be foolish enough to let the kids keep fighting and say, "Oh, leave them alone--they're just exploring social interactions"? Would they be that progressive?? Or would they discipline their kids because they only want to make a statement about gender issues and not anything else? Obviously they don't think of raising children properly in their own gender is a moral issue.

(All I can say is that the more I think about this, the more confused I get, so if I don't make any sense, I apologize.) :/

Susan said...

(Sorry--that's "as a moral issue".)

Word verification: glogical
Definition: State of mind when the mind is a glob (kind of like these parents', perhaps?)

lee n. field said...

>Here's something better than that: Calvin's Institutes on Kindle for $0.89 (h-t Challies).

Eh? Amazon, he say "Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 2395 KB
Print Length: 62 pages". The blurb says it's full text, the first reviewer says it's an abridgment.