Here is the man himself: Dennis Prager 

Here is the pre talk scene at the Glenn Miller Ballroom on the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder. 1100 people attended. 

Dennis Prager Spoke at CU Boulder - 1

Dennis is on KNUS right now talking about his speech at CU last night. Go to www.dennisprager.com right now and click on listen now or find a local station to hear recordings from last night and his life comments.

I'm going to be posting pictures and reports about last nights speech throughout the day.

Truth in Blogging: Full Disclosure

Before I post on Dennis Prager at CU last night. I need to reshape my blog and blogging life.

I have been reading Blog by Hugh Hewitt. It is a harbinger of change to alert the masses of information users that a new day has dawned in the world. The Information Reformation has reappeared, this time with a press that operates at the speed of light, that is available to anyone with a computer and access. The implications may make the Protestant Reformation look like minor episode in the story of the modern era.

I was struck by one idea in particular:

"The key to keep in mind is that trust drives everything. To build and maintain trust is a tremendously difficult thing, requiring patient attention to detail and discipline over long periods of time. Mistakes by bloggers will be forgiven, but not deception and certainly not stubborn attachment to falsehood...

"In a world changing as rapidly as ours is, only those who have earned and continue to earn trust will be in a position to influence the choices of third parties." pg. 155

I realized that I have not created my blog to build trust and create trust. That will change now.

I have changed my "about me" information to more clearly reflect who I am. I will now make my blog a reflection of my life and work, which happens to be Christian campus ministry.

I have feared being fully honest about who I am for a number of reason: mainly cowardice and a desire to control perceptions about me.

Yet in the blogosphere, the truth will come out. If someone wants to find out who I am, they probably can. If I'm not honest and forthright about who I am then I mortgage any trust that might be possible otherwise.

I am what I am. Me and Popeye. I hope you will help me correct the errors in my thinking. I hope I will earn your trust and add to the value of your life.

Blogging on Dennis Prager, speaking at CU, coming soon. 

Fight Club?: Teens Leaping For Thrills In 'Garage Jumping' Trend

local6.com - Problem Solvers - Teens Leaping For Thrills In 'Garage Jumping' Trend: "ORLANDO, Fla. -- Teenagers in Orlando, Fla., are leaping between 80-foot high public parking garages in a new trend called 'garage jumping,' according to a Local 6 News investigation.

Local 6 News reported that the thrill seekers are vaulting themselves between garages in downtown Orlando.

Tim Bargfrede told Local 6 News that he was following friends when he attempted to garage jump and did not make it to the other side. Bargfrede fell six stories and was knocked unconscious on impact.

'I just didn't make it,' Bargfrede said.

Bargfrede survived the 80-foot fall but was injured.

'The first time I came to the garage after my son's accident, I looked over and I just about broke out in tears,' the boy's father Tim Bargfrede said. 'I can't believe he actually survived. He looked like he was near death.'

'He (Bargfrede) is not he first person, he is not the second person, there have been four or five other individuals before him that did this,' family's attorney Vincent D'Assaro said."

I've said for years that Fight Club is the most profound film ever made on modern masculinity and it's problems. Young men with no purpose for their manhood will find foolish places to deposit their courage and strength. I think this story illustrates the point of the film:

" We're the middle children of history.... no purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives."

I think 9-11 may have changed this condition for some but clearly not for all.

Boker tov, Boulder!

I found this blog while searching the web for Prage info:Boker tov, Boulder!

Blogging Dennis Prager

I'm going to leave in a few minutes to go see Dennis Prager at CU Boulder. After a lovely dinner with my wife we'll go hear Dennis from the home of Ward Churchill. I got an invite to a special after event reception so hopefully I'll get a chance to meet Dennis tonight. I'll post pictures and thoughts on the lecture later tonight or tomorrow.

Chrenkoff asks Victor Davis Hanson about Iraq and the World

Arthur Chrenkoff posts a fine blog interview with Victor Davis Hanson. I've become a huge fan of VDH because of his immense grasp of History, particularly Military History:

"Look at the unrest in Lebanon, the voting in the West Bank, fear in Libya, pressure to reform from the Gulf to Egypt—all impossible without the removal and humiliation of Saddam Hussein, who, had he remained in power, would be nursing Arab pride by blaming us while he recycled petro-dollars, hand in glove with corrupt UN officials and Euros, for more weapons and his own debauchery..."

"The other scenario that a China or the Arab world, like the Ottomans of old, can cherry-pick Western technology and add its veneer to their own unfree societies to defeat us with our weaponry and their numbers and fanaticism, doesn't have a lot of historical precedent. The key is not 'them,' but us—to what degree will we continue to value freedom, invest rather than merely spend, and pass on stern values not just sensuality to our children?..."

"Thucydides reminds us that, contrary to modern behavioralists, human nature is constant and thus predictable, and thus as well history is useful and not like 19th-century biology that is rendered obsolete by a radically changing technology that allows the discovery of the cell or atom. And he warns us that no people, however wealthy and free, get a pass from history, that they don't have to struggle daily to ensure that they do not lose what was given to them."

mtv.com -- Brian 'Head' Welch of KORN has decided to follow Jesus

mtv.com: "Two months after his first visit to the Valley Bible Fellowship, Brian 'Head' Welch, who announced his departure from Korn last week (see 'Brian 'Head' Welch Explains Why He Left Korn'), held a sort of Christian coming-out party here Sunday in front of an estimated 10,000 churchgoers in three separate services. (Check out photos of Welch at the event.)"

Thomas and his Influence

That's what I figured:

"Naturally I taught my students Thomas Aquinas, but I found it difficult to do so. The problem was that his arguments presented such a strong appearance of truth. For the very beauty of this appearance, I had to exercise strong discipline not to weep. One of my students in those days asked permission to put a personal question. "I’ve been listening carefully," he said, "and I figure that you’re either an atheist or a Roman Catholic. Which one is it?"

You can see why, when I finally returned to Christian faith, I wanted that one foot in Catholic tradition."

And the rest as they say, is history. Aquinas may be among the most underrated thinkers in the minds of modern folk. Oh that's right, we're "enlightened". Calvin runs a very close second.

A suprising conversion

This is interesting:

From relapsed catholic : "'During the 1990s, J. Budziszewski rose to prominence as one of the leading intellectual lights among Evangelical Christians in America. A political theorist with a special interest in the natural-law tradition, he was highly sought as a speaker at conferences organized by groups such as the InterVarsity Fellowship and Campus Crusade for Christ. (...) 'For some Evangelical Protestants, then, it came as a jolt when, on Easter Sunday 2004, Budziszewski was received into the Catholic Church. After maintaining a public silence about his conversion for several months, Budziszewski agreed to tell the story to CWR...'"

I'll bet it was Aquinas that moved him across the goal line.

Lame

I've been away at a conference that tragically offered no internet access. I'm getting on a plane this morning but I'll be back blogging soon.

Prager comes to CU

If you live in Colorado, you should mark your calendar and come to CU Boulder to hear Dennis Prager on March 2.

He will be speaking on the topic: "Why are America and Israel the Two Most Hated Nations?"

I feel pretty confident that he will comment on Ward Churchill at some point in the evening.

Should be worth $10. Heck, I'd pay per view.

See you there. I'll post pictures if they let me take them.

The New York Newsprint

Jay Rosen has a great take on the way mainstream media like the New York Times, look down their nose at Blogs:

"The Guardian weighs in: 'Jordan's demise may be much more significant than it first appears.'

The Guardian piece has Steve Lovelady's remarks about 'salivating morons' originating in what he told the New York Times, but of course the Times got them from PressThink, a blog that it failed to name. It's happened before: the Times will say 'online' rather than 'PressThink,' as it did Feb. 14: 'The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail,' he lamented online after Mr. Jordan's resignation. (Another example.) Next time I quote the New York Times I think I will do it this way: 'As Paul Krugman said in newsprint last week...'"

Corporate Blogs

I find that as I explain what blogs are to people, it seems that blogging is a fringe activity more similar to bomb making than using a cell phone or fax machine. Well in case you needed more proof that blogs are mainstream, behold this blog from General Motors written by the Vice Chairman of GM. There's probably something to learn from this for every organization, whether for profit or otherwise.

I learned about this blog from a great interview with Hugh Hewitt on the second hour of Dennis Prager's radio show.

I just bought Hewitt's book, Blog. I couldn't stand it anymore so it will come tomorrow probably and i'll dive into it.

How to make your Blog popular?

Seth's Blog: "step 3: be controversial. Try to get a CNN VP to resign under pressure. Yell when you can speak, scream when you can whisper. "

Here's a better idea Seth: When you use your blog to make thinly veiled accusations and disparaging remarks about blogs that hurt your philosophical allies, include links to those you are heckling so that people don't assume that your analysis is just bigotry and falsehood.

Oh, and writing stuff worth reading is important too (like you said). Or at least linking to stuff worth reading.

A CU Professor weighs in on Churchill

CU Professor Paul Campos brings candor to CU and Churchill and the culture of Affirmative Action:

"The privileges created by tenure are supposed to insulate faculty from political pressures in general and censorship in particular. Yet those of us in the academy, if we were candid, would have to admit that few places are more riddled with the distorting effects of politics and censorship than university faculties.

Academics claim to despise censorship, but the truth is we do a remarkably good job of censoring ourselves. This is especially true in regard to affirmative action. Who among us can claim to have spoken up every time a job candidate almost as preposterous as Churchill was submitted for our consideration? Things like the Churchill fiasco are made possible by a web of lies kept intact by a conspiracy of silence.

The University of Colorado hired Churchill onto its faculty because he claimed to be an American Indian. Anyone who has the slightest familiarity with research universities can glance at his resume and state this with something close to complete confidence.

Churchill thus represents the reductio ad absurdum of the contemporary university's willingness to subordinate all other values to affirmative action. When such a grotesque fraud - a white man pretending to be an Indian, an intellectual charlatan spewing polemical garbage festooned with phony footnotes, a shameless demagogue fabricating imaginary historical incidents to justify his pathological hatreds, an apparent plagiarist who steals and distorts the work of real scholars - manages to scam his way into a full professorship at what is still a serious research university, we know the practice of affirmative action has hit rock bottom. Or at least we can hope so.

As someone of generally liberal political inclinations, I support affirmative action in principle. (And I have surely benefited from it in practice: My parents came to this country from Mexico in the year of my birth, and I spoke no English when I started school.) In theory, the argument that aggressively seeking out persons of diverse backgrounds can enrich the intellectual life of the university has great force.

Affirmative action is based, in part, on the idea that it will help us understand the viewpoints of the conquered as well as those of the conqueror, of the weak as well as the strong, of those far from power as well as those who wield it.

Too often, these sentiments are abused by those who sacrifice intellectual integrity while engaging in the most extreme forms of preferential hiring. Ward Churchill's career provides a lurid illustration of what can happen - indeed, of what we know will happen - when academic standards are prostituted in the name of increasing diversity. "

Wow! That was bracing.

Treason?

Rocky Mountain News: David Kopel: "The radio pair have done superb work on the Churchill controversy; among their contributions are playing excerpts from Churchill's CD, Pacifism as Pathology, in which he explicitly urges his audience to perpetrate more 9/11-type attacks in the United States."

That's treason isn't it?

It's a joke!

ScrappleFace: Little Eichmanns Group Celebrates Prof's Free Speech: "(2005-02-10) -- In a celebration of free speech inspired by a University of Colorado professor who compared America's 9/11 victims to Nazis, an ad hoc consortium of business leaders announced today that it would fund an endowed professorship in honor of Professor Ward Churchill.

The business group, Little Eichmanns for Free Speech, said it 'rejoices in Mr. Churchill's efforts to open a fresh dialogue between America's businesspeople and the academics whose important work is funded by the overflow of our insatiable greed.'

The group said it would donate a 'substantial sum' to create an endowment with the condition that 'Mr. Churchill be appointed as the Little Goebbels Professor of Ethics, in recognition of his efforts to establish the reputation of businesspeople in a fashion reminiscent of what Joseph Goebbels did for the Jews.'

Under the terms of endowment, university news releases about Mr. Churchill's research and public speaking must always identify him with the phrase 'the Little Goebbels Professor of Ethics.'

A spokesman for the university's board of regents said it 'welcomes expressions of free speech, especially when they're written in the memo field of a personal check.'"

You gotta love Scrappleface.

From Dan Rather to Eason Jordan

I don't know if you have been following the Eason Jordan (CNN Executive) scandal. I've been loosely following it via my favorite blogs. Why is it important? It is another milestone in the new era of media and information.

HughHewitt sums up the sea change:

"In Thursday's WeeklyStandard.com column I detailed how the blogs beat MSM on the story like a bongo drum. At this hour, if you type 'Eason Jordan' into the search engine of the Los Angeles Times, there will be no matches. None. The Times is not alone in having utterly failed its readers. A senior news executive has been forced to resign from an international news powerhouse for remarks he made about the military, the story is two weeks old, and the 'paper of record' of the West Coast does not have story on it in its archives, which probably means no stories at all, though search engines do sometimes fail.

The Times is not alone for demonstrating again a 'news judgment' hopelessly skewed by liberal bias. Some big papers got a 'just-in-time' treatment of the story into their pages, but most of those gave no hint that a real opinion storm had developed around Jordan, and none of them pushed the story along. It was new media's work, and only new media's that brought accountability to Eason Jordan and CNN."

Sex Blogging 3

Following up on my earlier sex blogging posts here and here...
John Leo explains what Lawrence Summers could have said:

"Yesterday I spoke bluntly at a closed academic conference and offered some possible explanations of why women are less represented than men in the upper reaches of math and science. In addition to the cost of the time women spend in bearing and raising children, I said that innate sexual differences may be playing a role.

"This was a politically incorrect thing to say, but I believe it is true. An enormous literature on sexual differences has been piling up for 30 years or more. Everybody knows about this work, but it is one of the large elephants in the academic living room that nobody is supposed to notice. It is officially invisible. Careers can end if you see it.

"The literature points to one conclusion: The sexes are different. Males and females have different aptitudes, and they make choices based on those aptitudes. Males tend to outperform females on mathematical reasoning, mechanical comprehension and spatial ability, while females tend to outperform males in such areas as language use, reading comprehension, verbal fluency, verbal memory, spelling and mathematical calculations. On many verbal tasks, women as a group are decisively better than men and remain so all their lives.

"In addition, there is a persistent finding that men tend to prefer to work with 'things,' while women, more than men, prefer to work with people. This may sound like a stereotype to you. It is certainly true that when the doors to high-paying professions were closed to women, females gravitated, by necessity, to valuable but lower-paying 'people' fields like nursing and teaching. But now that the barriers are finally coming down, women are still opting in great numbers for 'people' fields. We have seen a great surge of women into law and medicine but far less female interest in engineering, math and the hard sciences.

"On the whole, women tend to avoid fields with a low social component -- mechanical engineering, particle physics and entomology, for example. Women tend to favor fields with a high social dimension -- anthropology, sociology, psychology (particularly developmental and child psychology but not physiological psychology). Even within scientific fields, women lean toward more 'social' areas such as medicine, nutritional science, environmental health, biology and bioengineering.

"In his book 'Biology at Work: Rethinking Sexual Equality,' Kingsley Browne says that one important reason why girls turn away from science is that they tend to find it 'boring,' not a 'fun puzzle to study,' or to conclude that 'science breaks down people's ideas of right and wrong.'

"Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski, well-known researchers at Vanderbilt University, have spent more than 20 years tracking a group of 5,000 males and females who had been identified as mathematically gifted when they were 12 to 14 years old. Eight percent of the males, but only 1 percent of the females, pursued doctorates in math, engineering or physical science. More females than males received degrees in the life sciences, health or medicine. The females did not veer away from the hard sciences out of lack of opportunity, doubts about competence or fear of failure. The 5,000 gifted children knew they were good, but the females had different values and many made different choices.

"What is the lesson here? That it may be a great mistake to insist on equal male-female representation in every area of academia. The social sciences are now heavily female. Law and medicine may well become predominantly female too, while the hard sciences stay mostly male. Is there anything wrong with that? Benbow and Lubinski say frankly that 'there may be a need to consider a degree of unequal representation' in certain fields. 'Unequal representation' is threatening only if we think that respect for the choices made by our young people is less important than worrying about a perfect gender balance."

Jason Mitchener ~ Biography

Sure enough, the Jason from the post below is the Jason that I knew in college. I was first involved with Campus Crusade at ASU and that's where Jason's life was changed:

Jason Mitchener was born with a rare neuromuscular disease that now confines him to an electric wheelchair and requires him to use a ventilator to breathe. His body may be confined, but his spirit soars free.

Raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Jason spent his childhood chasing after academic success and popularity. He desired to be noticed for something other than his disability. Jason achieved academic success and was quite popular in school, but when he started college at Arizona State University in 1988, something was missing.In the second semester of his freshman year, Jason was invited to the weekly meeting of Campus Crusade for Christ. Religion wasn't new to him, as he had been a member of an Eastern religion called the Baha'i Faith, but these young Christians helped Jason see that he needed a relationship with Jesus Christ. Jason had been chasing after everything except what he needed most... Jesus.

After giving his life to the Lord, Jason got involved in many Christian activities on the college campus. He thought he had his life planned out and looked forward to perhaps starting a
performing arts ministry. All that changed suddenly in December of 1991 when he was admitted to the hospital with major breathing difficulty. A few weeks later, he was in a long-term care facility and connected to a portable ventilator that
was breathing for him.Jason thought his dreams had ended and gave up on God. But God didn't give up on him. After six months of not wanting to live but fearing death, Jason finally reached out to the Father for help. God helped him and told
Jason to share his comfort with others.

With newfound hope, Jason turned his attention to writing and preaching. His song lyrics and devotional writing inspire and encourage Christians to draw closer to God. Jason has had his songs released on three CDs by Christian independent artists. In 2003, he published his devotional book "Just Passing Through: Notes from a Fellow Traveler." Later that year, Jason released a music CD also titled “Just Passing Through: Notes
from a Fellow Traveler” which is a collection of ten contemporary Christian songs written or co-written by Jason but performed by talented studio musicians. Jason is also an accomplished digital artist using 3D software to create vibrant
images. Finally, Jason is a Christian speaker sharing his testimony "Power in Weakness" whenever and wherever he has the opportunity.

Jason currently lives in Phoenix and attends Crossroads Christian Fellowship.

You can read Jason's Testimony here.

Million Dollar Death

I haven't yet seen the movie but I got this interesting email from an aquaintance who has a critically disabled family member:

"Dear Friends,
It's time for academy awards again. "Million Dollar Baby" has been nominated. We'd just like to tell all our friends out there (and actor/director Mr. Eastwood) that not all disabled Americans are ready to be euthanized.

Our Matt started college last week, taking one class on Thursday afternoons -- Art of the Cinema. (chosen because it meets general ed requirements and transfers to all UC's, CSU's & USC's, a four-year degree being one future goal). Matt continues to work out a Project Walk 3 days a week in addition to doing some outpatient PT/OT to work on his deltoids.
As soon as the authorized rehab sessions are over, it will be back to PW 4
times a week. If anyone felt bummed after seeing "Million Dollar Baby," and needs an antidote for despair, read Jason Mitchener's testimony below, and/or click on the URL below and see how REAL fighters face adversity.

Thanks to you all for your ongoing love, support, & encouragement,
the Wilds
http://www.projectwalk.org/ProjectWalk_gaitCenter/theBuzz/theBuzz.htm

Disabled Christian Author Speaks
Against “Million Dollar Baby” Movie
Ventilator-dependent, confined to a wheelchair, and living in a rehabilitation center, Christian author and speaker Jason Mitchener has much in common with Hilary Swank’s character Maggie at the end of Clint Eastwood’s boxing movie “Million Dollar Baby.” The difference is that Mitchener is a true fighter.

(PRWEB) February 1, 2005 -- “I wanted to stop the moviegoers as they left the theater to tell them Maggie wasn’t the typical ventilator-dependent, disabled person. Most of us want to live.”For Christian author and speaker, Jason Mitchener, Clint Eastwood’s film “Million Dollar Baby” was just another inspirational boxing movie until the surprise third act when Hilary Swank’s character Maggie ends up as a quadriplegic and ventilator-dependent. Mitchener, who is also confined to a wheelchair and ventilator dependent, was at first excited to see a movie portray someone similar to him. “But when I saw Maggie asking Clint Eastwood’s character to end her life, I wanted to scream, ‘Don’t do it! Life is worth living.’”

In 1991, Mitchener was admitted to a rehabilitation center at the age of 21. He couldn’t bathe, feed, or dress himself. Paralyzed from the shoulders down due to a rare neuromuscular disease, he now required a ventilator to help him breathe. “At first, I felt useless, like my life was over. But I knew God had bigger plans for me.” Those plans included the publication of his devotional book “Just Passing Through: Notes from a Fellow Traveler” which he typed with a stick held between his teeth.“Eastwood’s film shook me to the core,” Mitchener says. “It was yet another attempt to show that the life of a disabled person has no value.” Mitchener proves his value every day by ministering daily to the hundreds of people who subscribe to his e-mail devotional messages. He is also a talented digital artist
and songwriter who has had songs recorded on CDs by three Christian music artists.“I couldn’t understand Maggie’s wish to end her life. She was a boxer, but she stopped fighting,” Mitchener says.

With his fierce desire to encourage others through his love for life, Mitchener is the true fighter.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
More on the subject? Did Eastwood choose to direct this film as a vendetta
against the suit filed against him for violating the ADA act?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Why 'Million Dollar Baby' infuriates the disabled
By Lennard J. Davis. (excerpted)
Lennard J. Davis teaches English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is also professor of Disability and Human Development at UIC's School of Applied Health Sciences.

Although Clint Eastwood's film "Million Dollar Baby" continues to garner
praise and awards -- a Director's Guild Award for Eastwood, seven Oscar
nominations, as well as best actress and director for the Golden Globes --
a mounting furor around the film accompanies these kudos.In Chicago last week, Not Dead Yet, a group of people with disabilities,
assembled at night to protest what they say is the anti-disability stance of the film. A demonstration also was held in Berkeley, Calif., and more are planned in other cities. How can there be such a wide gap between the critics and the disability activists' point of view?
(Note to readers: This story reveals a key plot twist in "Million Dollar Baby.")

The film tells us the story of a poor but feisty young woman, Maggie (Hilary Swank), who wants Frankie (Clint Eastwood) to train her to be a boxer. Initially he refuses, but when he gives in, she becomes an unbeatable opponent in the ring -- until she breaks her neck and becomes a quadriplegic. At that point, the film throws a left hook and switches from a Rocky-themed plot to a disability tragedy. When Maggie loses a leg to bedsores, she gives up her wish to live and begs to be euthanized by Frankie. And with a little soul searching, he agrees.

Many people with disabilities, including the National Spinal Cord Injury
Association, a national advocacy group with 13,000 members, see the
film as one that uncritically advocates euthanasia for quadriplegics.
There are no scenes in which anyone at the hospital tries to deal with Maggie's depression or offers her counseling or at the least an anti-depressant. And the feisty girl who would stop at nothing to fight in the ring, who after the accident musters the energy to tell her hillbilly family to bugger off, strangely changes character and becomes someone who gives up her ghost rather quickly -- even refusing Eastwood's offer of sending her to college (his one attempt to affect her despair).

Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that, "The characters in movies do not always do what we would do. That is their right. It is our right to disagree with them." He added, "What kind of movies would there be if everyone in them had to do what we thought they should do?" Ebert's right that freedom of expression and creative license are valuable things and every right-minded person should fight to preserve this right. But he's wrong if he thinks that films don't have a powerful influence on how we think about ourselves and the world.

Not an impartial artist
In this story, it is important to know that Eastwood isn't just any impartial artist in the area of disability. In fact, he has actively testified before the House Judiciary Committee against the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Eastwood is the owner of the Mission Ranch Inn in Carmel, Calif. A patron with disabilities had sued under the ADA claiming that the hotel restrooms were inaccessible and the only accessible guest room was more than double the price of other rooms in the hotel.
Eastwood was cited for some of these violations, although the major claims in the case were dismissed.

Angered by the ruling, Eastwood went to Congress to lobby for a bill that would have substantially weakened the ADA by requiring a 90-day notification of violations. At that time, Eastwood said that the ADA amounted to "a form of extortion."Although Eastwood didn't write the script, he did select it, act in it, direct and co-produce it. Is it surprising that "Million Dollar Baby" isn't particularly sympathetic to the views of people with disabilities? If a film were obviously anti-gay, or anti-women or anti-abortion -- would all the film critics rally around it and tell us what a great film it was?

So why do so many critics like this film? Could it be because they actually have very little knowledge or contact with people with disabilities, deaf people, blind people, quadriplegics -- except through the media? Many people, critics included, know very little about them or their issues. While it is rare to find a college student who isn't well versed in race, class, gender and sexuality -- few if any know about their fellow Americans with disabilities.Ironically, one of the ways that many people do actually know about this group is through movies. Think of all the films that have been made about people with disabilities: "The Miracle Worker," "Johnny Belinda," "My Left Foot," "Children of a Lesser God," "Rain Man," "Elephant Man," "A Beautiful Mind" and many more.

And this year's crop are close to garnering awards -- "Ray," "Aviator,"
"The Sea Inside" and "Million Dollar Baby." Come to think of it, if you want to be nominated for an award, you might just want to do a disability movie.

These films generally show us people with disabilities triumphing over their "handicap" or living the tragedy of the disease. Great themes for an uplifting feel-good film or a tearjerker. These films, for the most part, are made by abled people who are using the issue of disability to rally the forces of hope and pity. People with disabilities in film tend to be lionized or thrown to the lions. But they almost never are made or written by people with disabilities -- so the actual life experience of people who have walked the walk, tapped the cane, or wheeled the chair, isn't really reflected in many of these works.

F.X. Toole, who wrote the story on which "Million Dollar Baby" was based, had a heart condition throughout his life, his son said, and "had strong feelings about not wanting to live in a reduced state."

So-called normal people are fascinated and haunted by the person with a
disability, probably because, unlike any other identity, one can go from being a normal to a quadriplegic in a matter of seconds. Most white people aren't going to become black in their lifetimes, and most men (with a few exceptions) aren't going to become women in the near future -- but the shaky and uncertain position of being normal can easily convert by a simple medical report into a state of being disabled overnight. That's why most film viewers are so quick to either idolize or pity the disabled person (almost always played by a normal actor), and are so quick to acknowledge euthanasia as a quick fix to the as-yet unfixable condition of quadriplegia.

Inaccuracies portrayed
One of the areas of distress to people with disabilities is that "Million Dollar Baby" is so inaccurate and unnuanced about life with quadriplegia.
Eastwood wasn't interested in reality, like other normal filmmakers who make movies about the disabled, they are dealing in the grand myths and legends that surround the idea of disability rather than the reality of living with a disability.

It is true that "Million Dollar Baby" is only a film, but when it comes time for many people to make health decisions about themselves or a loved one's future, what experience or knowledge will they fall back on? Few people have personal experience with severe disabilities, and few will take the time to find out about what life is like living with deafness, blindness or disability. No, most people will fall back on what they know -- which is what they have garnered from novels, plays, films and television shows. So, it's only when such art forms begin to reflect the real lives of people with disabilities, will most folks get a better understanding of the 15 to 20 percent of Americans who live and cope daily with disabilities."

I need to do some research but I think I actually went to school with Jason Michener at Arizona State. He was already disabled, and already a fighter.

FIRE's Torch

FIRE's Torch:

"America's colleges and universities are, in theory, indispensable institutions in the development of critical minds and the furthering of individual rights, honest inquiry, and the core values of liberty, legal equality, and dignity. Instead, they often are the enemies of those qualities and pursuits, denying students and faculty their voices, their fundamental rights, and even their individual humanity. The university setting is where students are most subject to the assignment of group identity, to indoctrination of radical political orthodoxies, to legal inequality, to intrusion into private conscience, and to assaults upon the moral reality of individual rights and responsibilities. Illiberal university policies and practices must be exposed to public criticism and scrutiny so that the public is made aware of the violations of basic rights that occur every day on college campuses."

Check out this blog devoted to exposing the death of free speech on campus.

Only Offensive?

Nelson Archer via Instapundit.com -:

"Those whom the fall of the Berlin Wall had left orphans of a cause, spent the next decade plotting the containment of the US. It was a complex operation that involved the (in many cases state-sponsored) mushrooming of NGOs, Kyoto, the creation of the ICC, the salami tactics applied against America’s main strategic ally in the Middle-East, Israel, through the Trojan Horse of the Oslo agreements, the subversion of the sanctions against Iraq etc. I’m not as conspiratorially-minded as to think that all these efforts were in any way centralized or that they had some kind of master-plan behind them. It was above all the case of the spirit of the times converging, through many independent manifestations, towards a single goal. Nonetheless we can be sure that, after those manifestations reached a critical mass, there has been no lack of efforts to coordinate them.

And so, spontaneously up to a point, anti-Americanism became the alternative ideology that came to fill in the vacuum left by the failure of traditional, USSR-based communism and its Maoist or Trotskyite satellites. Before 1989, the global left had something to fight for: either the strengthening of the communist states or the correction of what they called their bureaucratic distortions. To fight for something is simultaneously to fight against whatever threatens it, and thus, the leftists were anti-Western and anti-Americans too, anti-capitalistic in short.

Now, whatever they wanted to defend or protect doesn’t exist anymore. They have only things to destroy, and all those things are personified in the US, in its very existence."

This may explain why Micheal Moore, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, et al. have much critique and little alternative.

Murder

Human remains found in house: "Kenneth Lee Allen, 29, and his sister, Kari A. Allen, 18, confessed to St. Charles County, Mo., investigators that they were involved in the deaths of their mother and two grandparents, authorities said."

I'm speechless.

Burt's Face

ThisisLondon: "Plastic surgeon Alex Karidis, who regularly treats celebrity clients at his central London practice, said: 'The problem with Burt is that his skin has suffered an awful lot of sun damage, which has made it look crepey and lined."

Either this is a misprint or there's a new adjective that is even worse than creepy: being compared to french food. Poor Burt Reynolds. It seems the beauty myth is not just for women any more.

Linked

Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means: This might just be one of the most interesting, thought provoking books I've ever read. And I'm only half way through it.

Instapundit.com - Ward Churchill/Leftists in the Academy round up.

Instapundit.com - has a round up of left wing hatred for America and Jews found on your local Univeristy faculty.

I bet with a little effort and digging a round up like this could be posted every week.

TIME: 25 Most Influential Evangelicals Photo Essay

TIME: 25 Most Influential Evangelicals Photo Essay: Provides an interesting secular take on Evangelicals.

Pursue 'safe and tried path' to success

From xelns:
Pursue 'safe and tried path' to success

"If you haven't been to a college campus lately, here's a quick primer on the current freshman/1st year class:

• 26 percent frequently talk about politics.

• 48 percent had 'A' averages in high school.

• 33 percent say the death penalty should be abolished.

• 23 percent say racial discrimination is no longer a problem in America (though at historically black colleges, that figure drops to 14 percent).

• 51 percent spent less than an hour per week reading for pleasure in their senior year of high school.

Each fall since 1965, first-year students at more than 400 four-year colleges and universities sit down to a massive survey developed by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles. It asks about everything from their intended majors to their political and spiritual values.

The participants probably don't realize that they are throwing their mite into a treasure trove. For college administrators, the survey results can be a road map for future course offerings, financial aid, and counseling services. For social scientists, it's a chance to explore a nearly 40-year arc of shifting values.

From her vantage point as dean of first-year students at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, Voncile White says that students in recent years have become much more worried about choosing the "right major" and boosting their résumés with community service.

"I find them a lot more reluctant to explore something they haven't done before - they'd rather take a safe and tried path," Ms. White says. "We're engaged in a struggle to try to get them to become educated individuals rather than just people who know a lot of stuff."

Her observations follow some of the trend lines in "The American Freshman/1st year students" the annual report by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute (HERI). Results were released Monday from the fall of 2004, the 39th year of the survey. The nearly 290,000 responses were statistically adjusted to reflect the nation's 1.3 million full-time freshmen.

For the past 25 years, there's been an increase in the percentage of students who place a high value on "being very well off financially," and a parallel decline in the importance of "developing a meaningful philosophy of life".

When the survey started in the 1960s, focus groups insisted that the "philosophy of life" choice be added to the list of important goals students could check off. "That was the most popular value," says Alexander Astin, founding director of HERI, who has been involved with the project from its inception. "Most of the decline occurred during the '80s - the Reagan era, the 'Me' era."

Other changes help explain students' concerns about their financial futures. With rising college costs, for instance, the portion of students who plan to work full time while in school has more than doubled since 1980, to 6.3 percent.

There was a slight uptick in favor of developing a meaningful philosophy of life, but researchers won't call it a reversal of the trend unless it continues for another year or two.

The overall pull of materialism in society is prompting many colleges to do more "to encourage exploration of the inner life," Mr. Astin says.

Some campuses are reviving Western Civilization and Great Books courses, which send the message "Know thyself," he says. The trend of service-learning also requires self-reflection. And many colleges now have "Freshmen 101" programs. "The best are an attempt to get the students to look at what the college is offering and to make sense out of it in terms of their own values and aspirations and hopes," Astin says.

A spinoff project on spirituality in higher education is also in the works at HERI, tracking students all the way through college to explore the interaction of academics, religion, spirituality, and other aspects of college life. A pilot study found that by junior year, church attendance drops off significantly, but more students place importance on integrating spirituality into their lives (58 percent of juniors, compared with 51 percent of freshmen).

When it comes to political engagement, first-year students don't come close to their 1960s counterparts, but one-third still say it's very important to keep up with political affairs.

Nearly half consider themselves "middle of the road" politically, but the numbers are growing on the far right (2.2 percent) and far left (3.4 percent). Those extremes saw the biggest single-year increase in the 35 years the question has been on the survey, perhaps because of the polarized presidential election season of 2004, says Linda Sax, a UCLA professor of education and director of the survey.

Some of the most noticeable changes over the life of the survey have been prompted by the women's movement, Astin says. Women and men are much more similar now than in the 1960s and '70s, in everything from their career interests to their values. One notable difference this year, however: More women (36 percent) than men (16 percent) say they frequently feel overwhelmed by all they have to do."

xelns: Pursue 'safe and tried path' to success

xelns: Pursue 'safe and tried path' to success

Pursue 'safe and tried path' to success
If you haven't been to a college campus lately, here's a quick primer on the current freshman/1st year class:

• 26 percent frequently talk about politics.

• 48 percent had 'A' averages in high school.

• 33 percent say the death penalty should be abolished.

• 23 percent say racial discrimination is no longer a problem in America (though at historically black colleges, that figure drops to 14 percent).

• 51 percent spent less than an hour per week reading for pleasure in their senior year of high school.

Each fall since 1965, first-year students at more than 400 four-year colleges and universities sit down to a massive survey developed by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles. It asks about everything from their intended majors to their political and spiritual values.

The participants probably don't realize that they are throwing their mite into a treasure trove. For college administrators, the survey results can be a road map for future course offerings, financial aid, and counseling services. For social scientists, it's a chance to explore a nearly 40-year arc of shifting values.

From her vantage point as dean of first-year students at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, Voncile White says that students in recent years have become much more worried about choosing the "right major" and boosting their résumés with community service.

"I find them a lot more reluctant to explore something they haven't done before - they'd rather take a safe and tried path," Ms. White says. "We're engaged in a struggle to try to get them to become educated individuals rather than just people who know a lot of stuff."

Her observations follow some of the trend lines in "The American Freshman/1st year students" the annual report by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute (HERI). Results were released Monday from the fall of 2004, the 39th year of the survey. The nearly 290,000 responses were statistically adjusted to reflect the nation's 1.3 million full-time freshmen.

For the past 25 years, there's been an increase in the percentage of students who place a high value on "being very well off financially," and a parallel decline in the importance of "developing a meaningful philosophy of life".

When the survey started in the 1960s, focus groups insisted that the "philosophy of life" choice be added to the list of important goals students could check off. "That was the most popular value," says Alexander Astin, founding director of HERI, who has been involved with the project from its inception. "Most of the decline occurred during the '80s - the Reagan era, the 'Me' era."

Other changes help explain students' concerns about their financial futures. With rising college costs, for instance, the portion of students who plan to work full time while in school has more than doubled since 1980, to 6.3 percent.

There was a slight uptick in favor of developing a meaningful philosophy of life, but researchers won't call it a reversal of the trend unless it continues for another year or two.

The overall pull of materialism in society is prompting many colleges to do more "to encourage exploration of the inner life," Mr. Astin says.

Some campuses are reviving Western Civilization and Great Books courses, which send the message "Know thyself," he says. The trend of service-learning also requires self-reflection. And many colleges now have "Freshmen 101" programs. "The best are an attempt to get the students to look at what the college is offering and to make sense out of it in terms of their own values and aspirations and hopes," Astin says.

A spinoff project on spirituality in higher education is also in the works at HERI, tracking students all the way through college to explore the interaction of academics, religion, spirituality, and other aspects of college life. A pilot study found that by junior year, church attendance drops off significantly, but more students place importance on integrating spirituality into their lives (58 percent of juniors, compared with 51 percent of freshmen).

When it comes to political engagement, first-year students don't come close to their 1960s counterparts, but one-third still say it's very important to keep up with political affairs.

Nearly half consider themselves "middle of the road" politically, but the numbers are growing on the far right (2.2 percent) and far left (3.4 percent). Those extremes saw the biggest single-year increase in the 35 years the question has been on the survey, perhaps because of the polarized presidential election season of 2004, says Linda Sax, a UCLA professor of education and director of the survey.

Some of the most noticeable changes over the life of the survey have been prompted by the women's movement, Astin says. Women and men are much more similar now than in the 1960s and '70s, in everything from their career interests to their values. One notable difference this year, however: More women (36 percent) than men (16 percent) say they frequently feel overwhelmed by all they have to do.

normblog: Sunday, Sunday

normblog: Sunday, Sunday: "Indeed. But there is joy and there is illusion, and the two don't have to be shackled together. Liberals, democrats, people on the left, who could not yesterday, and cannot today, find it in themselves to rejoice about what Iraqis, in their millions and after all they've been through, bravely did... how miserable, what unfortunates. Just think how many of these same people would have been overjoyed had, say, George Bush lost last November to John Kerry. Would they have foregone immediate expressions of that joy for cautious, hard-headed analysis of the upcoming Kerry presidency? Would they hell. They would have been whooping it up from New York to San Francisco, from Auckland and Sydney to Berlin. The analysis, in that event, would have waited until tomorrow or the day after, or else been allowed to stand side by side with fulsome sentiments of celebration. But for the people of Iraq, different rules.

No, the truth, the thing that so many cannot digest or stomach, is that the road to what happened yesterday was opened by a Republican US president whom they despise and a New Labour prime minister whom they hold in only slightly higher regard than that, while they themselves were marching and otherwise disporting themselves in a way that would have closed off that road for who knows how long. Well, if you could not take pleasure from what happened in Iraq yesterday, I extend my commiserations. For Iraqis and a lot of other people who felt able to share in their celebration it was a very good day."

Dennis Prager: Professors as inquisitors

from Dennis Prager's weekly column:

In the year 2005, nearly four centuries after Galileo was forced to recant observable scientific facts about our solar system, the president of Harvard University was forced to do a similar thing. He was compelled to apologize for advancing an idea about men and women supported by scientific research and likely to be true.

But for most professors, neither finding truth nor seeking wisdom nor teaching is the primary goal of the university; promoting leftist ideas is. Most Americans know this to be true -- hence the chasm between most Americans and the university. But many Americans do not wish to acknowledge this. To come to realize that the highest institutions of learning often do not value learning but seek to propagandize their children (largely against everything they, the parents, believe in) is too painful. Most people can't confront the fact that, unless their child is studying the natural sciences, they have paid huge sums of money for their child to be able to share bathrooms with members of the opposite sex, read columns in college newspapers about American evil and tongue techniques for better oral sex, binge drink and, with a few noble exceptions, be propagandized.

What is most amazing about the Harvard story is that by and large neither the Harvard community nor any other university seems to be embarrassed by it. And one can only weep for America over the president of its most prestigious university fully caving in and apologizing for saying what he knows to be true.

Imagine the good that could have been achieved had Lawrence Summers said this:

Under my tenure as president of this university, never will a capable woman be turned away from teaching at Harvard. And we will scour the earth for women who will teach math and science at Harvard. But under this same tenure, no serious idea will ever be censured and its author forced to apologize. The motto of this university is 'Veritas,' 'Truth,' and I will not allow it to be changed.

No wonder the Democratic Party is so keen on sending billions more dollars of taxpayer money to universities through tuition tax credits. They know that the university is a factory churning out leftists.

As readers are aware, this year I am writing a series of columns making the case for Judeo-Christian values. The secular university provides one of the most cogent arguments for those values: This institution, which is the most opposed to Judeo-Christian values, is also the least committed to truth."

Of course they'll teach in class that Christians are narrow minded. Sigh.

The Finger

www.daybydaycartoon.com

Jarvis Iraq Round Up

Jeff Jarvis sums up reaction:

The Eeyore Analysis of Iraq

: I'll be on MSNBC in the 5p hour with Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, who tries to wrap-up blogger reaction to the election from the antiwar camp (I won't call it the liberal side).

Problem is, there isn't much. Oliver did the Chicken Little dance yesterday but hasn't acknowledged the success today. Jerome Armstrong of MyDD argues that this opens the door to an Iranian-like rule of fundamentalists but doesn't say how he makes that prediction when the clerics decided to stay out of the Iraqi government and every poll makes it clear the people don't want that. Armando at Kos does the Eeyore thing (see also Juan Cole, below); Kos is still silent, as is Atrios.

Whether it's Kerry or any of these bloggers, it would be the grownup, mature, generous, humanistic, caring -- yes, dare I say, liberal -- thing to do to be glad that people who lived under tyranny are now giving birth to democracy.

Democracy isn't a right-or-left thing, folks. It's a right-and-left thing, remember?

The Election in Pictures

WHERE WERE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING!? THE MEN, THE WOMEN, THE CHILDREN! WHY IN THE WORLD ARE THEY ALL STANDING IN LINE!

They are voting. Compiled in a wonderful slideshow, aptly set the "Theme for the Common Man".



I may paste my finger in purple, to stand with Iraq, and to honor the American Soldiers who helped make it possible.

Loving Mark Steyn

You've got to love Mark Steyn! Quoted at Instapundit.

I'm with you James

James Lileks on the elections in iraq:

"I’m just glad I’m stupid enough to be hopeful. I’m glad I’m naive enough to suspect Iraqis actually wanted to vote. I’m very glad I’m not so aslosh with solipsistic hatred that any success in Iraq makes me trot out a cynical riposte so the rest of my buddies on Olympus will nod in wry assent. I’m glad that a picture of a mother holding her daughter to cast the ballot reminds me that this is number two in a series. All other things aside – which is a difficult thing to posit, I know – I’m glad to be on the side of holding elections. In the end I’m glad to be glad. And now I will go skip through the daisies and sing happy songs about bunnies, because I am obviously a fool. What was the cover story of the Village Voice I saw in the library today? “Bush’s plan to destroy the world.” Destroy it some more, George.

Then again, things can’t be going that well, if New York artists have been mocking it with welcome mats. Next thing you know they’ll be weaving dish towels that show Iraqi women’s pay disparity increasing after the invasion, if you look very closely at the pattern. Or it could be just some figs."

I'm with you James.

The Election

Roger Simon is blogging the Iraqi Election. Of course Instapundit will have links and analysis.

This is a historic day. May God grant peace and safety to the people of Iraq.

Starbucks for Lent

LarkNews.com has this important idea, just in time for the Lenten season.

Looks like I'll be spending Mardi Gras with a caramel Machiatto.

Turin Shroud may be 3000 years old

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World: "A chemist who worked on testing of the Shroud of Turin says new analysis of the fiber indicates the cloth that some say was the burial linen of Jesus could be up to 3,000 years old.

The analysis, by a scientist who was on the original 1978 team that was allowed to study tiny pieces of the cloth, indicates the shroud is far older than the initial findings suggesting it was probably from medieval times, and will likely be seized on by those who believe it wrapped the body of Jesus after his crucifixion.

'I cannot disprove that this cloth was the burial shroud that was used on Jesus,' Raymond N. Rogers, a retired chemist from the University of California-operated Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in a telephone interview Friday from his home.

'The chemistry says it was a real shroud, the blood spots on it are real blood, and the technology that was used to make that piece of cloth was exactly what Pliny the Elder reported fort his time,' about 70 A.D., Rogers said, referring to the naturalist of ancient Roman times."

Interesting.

CU Churchill 2: Welcome through the Looking Glass of your local Univerisity

The Daily Camera: Sports Columnists: "Woelk: Does Barnett have less rights than professor?

January 29, 2005

Notes, quotes, queries and observations heading into the weekend ...

A question for CU prez Betsy Hoffman and her regent pals:

Just last year, Hoffman suspended a football coach for saying, 'Katie was a girl and not only was she a girl, she was terrible.'

But less than a year later, the CU administration defends the rights of a professor to call the victims of the World Trade Center attacks 'little Eichmanns.'

Gary Barnett was immediately suspended for his comments and prevented from doing a very important part of his job.

Ward Churchill, however, is protected by the First Amendment, according to CU administrators, and is allowed to continue spewing hate speech whenever and wherever he chooses.

My question is, what's the difference (other than the fact that Barnett told the truth and Churchill voiced an opinion)?

Is Barnett also not protected by the First Amendment? Or, do some folks have more constitutional rights than others? If you make Hoffman mad, does that limit those constitutional rights? Is political correctness a factor in gauging those rights?

Or, could it be that when Barnett made his statement, Buffalo Betsy's job was also on the line?"

Let's not forget that CU is a school were hundreds of students publically smoke pot in the center of the campus every April 12th at 4:12 in the afternoon.

Yeah it's the football coach who needs to be disciplined. Off with his head!

Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper

LILEKS (James) The Bleat:
"I bought some, because it seemed unlikely that so many flavors could be jammed into one receptacle without creating some new uberflavor that opened new dimensions and let through the howling minions of hell. It’s as if they didn’t know when to stop. Cherry is no strangers to cohabitation with other flavors; vanilla has a new role as an ingredient adjunct for Coke. Cherry Vanilla sounds like the name of a 60s model who worked with Warhol. Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper throws it all up in the air – literally, perhaps – when you consider that Dr Pepper itself is the flavor that cannot be readily identified, but you wouldn’t be surprised if it’s prunes. Any additional flavor will simply smother the Pepper flavor. It’s like Cherry Vanilla coffee. No one ever takes a sip and says “boy, you can really taste the coffee.”

LOL!

CU Churchill Controversy

Instapundit.com: "Still more on Churchill here. And perhaps the best take comes from reader Harvey Schneider:

The irony of the Churchill episode is that Colorado University gets federal money. You would think with his radical Anti-American outlook, The money he makes as an instructor would burn in his hands like Holy Water in a demons hands. He seems to be guilty of the same crime as many in the WTC that day. Being a part of the system."

This from Instapundit's roundup on the Ward Churchill controversy.

The Party of Kennedy

HughHewitt.com: "The party of Truman and JFK has a problem when its advance media guard does not celebrate the rise of a democracy from the ashes of a dictatorship. More than a problem, actually, a collapse at the core. It is now, at best, the party of Henry Wallace and Teddy Kennedy, and that's not a party remotely close to the American mainstream."

This is Hugh's conclusion regarding the silence of leftist bloggers on the importance of elections in Iraq. He has a roundup of links so that you can see for yourself.

"What has Michael Moore got to say? A big picture of Saddam, an artilce on former Baathists running in the elections, and a letter about his 9/11 picture winning a People's Choice award --I kid you not."

Beer - Is there anything it can't do?

Ananova - Man peed way out of avalanche: "A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains.

He told them that after the avalanche, he had opened his car window and tried to dig his way out.

But as he dug with his hands, he realised the snow would fill his car before he managed to break through.

He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

He said: 'I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I'm glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there.'"

This man is undoubtably, the greatest hero in world history.

More quotes from Chrenkoff

Chrenkoff:

"Sheikh Fawzan Al-Fawzan, a professor at the Al-Imam University in Saudi Arabia confuses Christmas with season's holidays:

'These great tragedies and collective punishments that are wiping out villages, towns, cities, and even entire countries, are Allah's punishments of the people of these countries, even if they are Muslims.

'Some of our forefathers said that if there is usury and fornication in a certain village, Allah permits its destruction. We know that at these resorts, which unfortunately exist in Islamic and other countries in South Asia, and especially at Christmas, fornication and sexual perversion of all kinds are rampant. The fact that it happened at this particular time is a sign from Allah. It happened at Christmas, when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion.'
It came as a shock to me, having been brought up as Polish Roman Catholic that it was really supposed to be all about fornication and perversion. Thanks to Sheik Al Fawzan, at least I now know the true meaning of Christmas."

I guess the Sheikh would have us believe something innappropriate about the term "stocking stuffer".

What are we going to do about underpopulation?

Foreign Affairs - The Global Baby Bust - Phillip Longman: "Summary: Most people think overpopulation is one of the worst dangers facing the globe. In fact, the opposite is true. As countries get richer, their populations age and their birthrates plummet. And this is not just a problem of rich countries: the developing world is also getting older fast. Falling birthrates might seem beneficial, but the economic and social price is too steep to pay. The right policies could help turn the tide, but only if enacted before it's too late."

Wait a minute, I thought we were supposed to be working hard to solve the terrible problems of overpopulation. Does this mean everything else I learned in school is false?

Hmmm.

Sex Blogging Part 2

Years ago, before my children were able to understand the English language, I was a huge addict of the Simpsons. I still love the show but my kids are not yet old enough to appreciate the satire and sarcasm, so I don't watch it much anymore. But now that I have Tivo I can watch the Simpsons on my time. Anyhoo...

I was watching the Simpsons tonight and as usual they summed up a cultural issue with more truth and brevity than Shakespeare himself. Marge and her two sisters were watching TV and Patty and Selma announce that "Nookie in New York" is about to be on BHO. "It's about four single women behaving like gay men." Patty and Selma, claim to love the show because "that is so like our lives!"

Devastating.

One of the startling revelations in "Taking Sex Differences Seriously" is the revelation that promiscuous women who are happy, like those depicted on "Nookie in New York" (or as we all know it "Sex in the City") almost don't exist, statistically:

"Seventy-one percent of teenage girls report being in love with their last sexual partner but only 45 percent of boys do. And teen girls are far less likely than boys to report being happy with their sexual experiences and far more likely to report that they wished they had waited longer to have sex. On the other hand, married women report that marital sex is the best they ever had, and far more regularly than men they say the sex is better two years after marriage than it was on the honeymoon.

The picture doesn't get prettier for more mature singles. The Samanthas of the world are few. According to the research of Syracuse University anthropologist John Townsend, the most sexually experienced single women, while still believing that casual sex is fine, find that their feelings will not cooperate. They feel used, hurt and demeaned after sleeping with men uninterested in relationships. Many of the most sexually active men, on the other hand, regularly engage in pleasurable sex with women they barely know and sometimes don't even like.

The real world of thirty-something, single women bounces from books like How to Heal the Heart By Hating to those with advice about How Not To Stay Single. In 1999, 29 percent of 35-to-44-year-old females were unmarried; in 1960 fewer than 13 percent were. These facts are best explained by men enjoying unencumbered sex while hoping that a more appealing and equally willing woman may be right around the corner.

Too often, in today's culture, women stroll off to the playground of casual sex only to be hurt. They conclude, wrongly, that they are too sensitive to enjoy what their favorite female TV characters seem to love. Rather,the feeling that casual sex makes them unhappy is too common among women to be idiosyncratic. It's a normal, healthy reaction to a bad idea. To get what they want most -- a committed, loving relationship and good sex -- women should start by saying, "No."

I guess Patty and Selma are closer to the truth than "Sex in the City" There are indeed promiscuous women, but apparently precious few are happy about it. I guess that reality is too hard hitting for BHO. That's why the Simpsons will go on and on. Sometimes it takes a cartoon to show the real world.

And the part about gay men is right on the money. I don't have time to go into it right now but I've said it before and I'll say it again: I as a heterosexual man have far more in common with a homosexual man than with a woman. Because men and women are different. I take that seriously. As Billy Crystal said to Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally : "Women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place." If it weren't for women providing a brake to the runaway male libido, men would have sex all the time. There is sex in the city but it doesn't look like the TV show would have us believe.

I love the Simpsons.

Sex Blogging

I was going to call this gender blogging but that's exactly the problem. A new book (hat tip: Instapundit) about the importance of sex: Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences
by Leonard Sax

This book is another that helps us get over the foolishness about gender. You see sex is fixed (e.g. male or femalee). Gender is constructed and chosen (or so we are told). Yet let's hear Sax on sex:

From Publishers Weekly
In the feminist conception of gender flexibility, no set rules apply: girls can play with trucks; boys can play with dolls. But pediatrician and psychologist Sax argues that our theories about gender's fluidity may be wrong and to apply them to children in their formative years is quite dangerous. Sax believes the brains of boys and girls are hardwired differently: boys are more aggressive; girls are more shy. And deliberately changing a child's gender—in cases of intersex (hermaphrodism) or accident (as in the case of David Reimer, who was raised as a girl after a hideous circumcision mishap)—can ruin a child's life. Sax also believes modern gender philosophy has resulted in more boys being given behavior-modifying drugs and more girls being given antidepressants. Much of his argument makes sense: we may have gone to the other extreme and tried too hard to feminize boys and masculinize girls.

This book is similar to another phenomenal book called Taking Sex Differences Seriously by Steven E. Rhoads. His book and many wonderful articles can be found at www.sexdifferences.net.

Rhoads and Sax argue that new studies prove that men and women are biologically biased by their sex and ignoring this fact leads to ruin.

Another example can be found here, ripped from the headlines:

It has long been known that there are strong differences between boys and girls in their literary preferences. According to reading interest surveys, both boys and girls are unlikely to choose books based on an "issues" approach, and children are not interested in reading about ways to reform society -- or themselves. But boys prefer adventure tales, war, sports and historical nonfiction, while girls prefer stories about personal relationships and fantasy. Moreover, when given choices, boys do not choose stories that feature girls, while girls frequently select stories that appeal to boys.

Unfortunately, the textbooks and literature assigned in the elementary grades do not reflect the dispositions of male students. Few strong and active male role models can be found as lead characters. Gone are the inspiring biographies of the most important American presidents, inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs. No military valor, no high adventure. On the other hand, stories about adventurous and brave women abound. Publishers seem to be more interested in avoiding "masculine" perspectives or "stereotypes" than in getting boys to like what they are assigned to read.

At the middle school level, the kind of quality literature that might appeal to boys has been replaced by Young Adult Literature, that is, easy-to-read, short novels about teenagers and problems such as drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, domestic violence, divorced parents and bullying. Older literary fare has also been replaced by something called "culturally relevant" literature -- texts that appeal to students' ethnic group identification on the assumption that sharing the leading character's ethnicity will motivate them to read.

Apparently boys will be boys and they aren't as interested in relavance or race as those who "educate" them are. Until the confusion clears regarding the significance of sex (not gender) I will sex blog.

Seems even Harvard could use some sex blogging.

A Pastor tells why he blogs...

Ted Bolsinger, a Pastor, gives a compelling perspective on why pastors should blog:

In my last post I argued that pastors, of all people, should blog because we have a vested interest in something that the blogosphere makes more readily available: To more effectively, cheaply and regularly communicate the elements of Christian faith to a wider number of people. This will also, I argued, encourage our long-term pastorates and presence in our home churches (and families) by making it easier to reach larger numbers of people each week without leaving home.

Today I want to also add that blogging allows us to be far more effective at communicating Christian truth in depth, and responding to challenges to the faith effectively, broadly and without delay. Let me highlight both briefly by focusing on two terms that Blog helps us better understand.

In Blog, Hugh Hewitt uses a number of political examples to demonstrate the way in which bloggers can give attention to crucial issues that are often overlooked by the “mainstream media”. Very often TV news, magazines and such are not only victims of the biases (aren’t we all), but are handcuffed by the perception of the public’s “short attention span.” So, complicated news stories are quickly eclipsed by the sound bite.

We pastors fall into this trap also. When our congregants expect us to deliver sermons filled with strong exegesis, relevant examples and a joke or two all in 25 minutes or less (ok, I’m a Presbyterian…some of you get a lot more time than that.) It is easy to develop the habit of reducing everything to the ridiculous. Pretty soon our theology is nothing more than slogans or acronyms or representative stories. And communicating the depths of crucial issues and doctrine go by the way side. (By the way, publishers are doing the same thing with books. Unless you are NT Wright, it’s pretty hard to publish something that is long, in-depth and requiring serious study. So most books are necessarily short (and often shallow).

With a web log, I don’t have to worry about “sales” and “numbers,” I can offer a “serial” of teachings that can go as far or as deep as I need to go. I don’t worry about running out of time or getting the service over before the childcare team is pulling their hair out, instead I just pick up the discussion in the next post. Long deep conversations are more readily available to more people who are eager to go deeper, and those who aren’t can move on and check back in later.

As a guy with a Ph.D. in the “ecclesiastical and transformative implications of the doctrine of the Trinity,” it’s nice to have a place to actually write about the Trinity without fearing that 500 people will skip church next week. When I want to probe a subject, I can linger as I long as I like.

In the few weeks that I been doing this blog thing, I have been really blessed to read and link to a number of incredibly thoughtful, easily accessible posts by pastors and theologians that have strengthened and inspired me.

If we pastors are going to blog, then let’s fulfill our calling and equip the saints and teach the church. Let’s not limit this blogging thing to just “promotion” of our “stuff”, but instead allow it to be a true extension of our ministries to mature the faithful.

The second and most dramatic example of the power of blogging, is demonstrated in Hugh’s discussion of the speed of the blogosphere, “swarming” and the “long tail”. Speed is just the reality of how information can be linked instantly around the globe. Swarming is the way in which a number of people from a number of different positions “swarm” a challenge or opportunity and maximize the effectiveness of their position. The “long tail” refers to the huge, cumulative effect of a number of small opinion makers to make a difference over a long term.

If you followed the blogs immediately after the annual “let’s demythologize and debunk Christianity just in time for the holiday editions” of Time and Newsweek, then you saw the overwhelming and rapid effectiveness of literally hundreds of pastors who posted thoughtful, cogent, articulate responses to the unscholarly and, in some instances, irresponsible articles published by the newsmagazines. The blogosphere allowed even those who would never be quoted by the LA Times an opportunity to respond and then be linked and disseminated across the world in minutes.

No longer do we have to our faith-affirming responses relegated to the “letters to editor” pages a week after the fact while the front pages are filled with long-debunked scandals that might sell a few papers. Instead by writing and linking and writing and linking, we can respond to the challenges posed by skeptics, not with the hue and cry of the hurt, but with the rapid, clear and sober answers that reveal the truth.

(I have already been thinking of how powerful the blogosphere will be next year when the movie version of “The Da Vinci Code” is released. We can now address the questions that film will inevitably raise by bringing people solid accessible teaching right to their home computers.)

Another example of how blogs help us respond to challenges, now oft-cited has been the history-making response of internet donations to relief efforts in the wake of the Tsunami disaster. While I needed to wait until Sunday to encourage my congregation to give generously, I (along with virtually every other pastor-blogger I know) posted a link on my blog to World Vision as soon as I could and within hours of the disaster, money was pouring in.

My friends, the blogosphere offers us opportunities to faithful put forth clear witness for Christ in large and influential numbers. So perhaps the final word is appropriately a warning. Like any technology, it can be used for good or evil. In his book Hugh reminds us, “The blogosphere is about trust.” Let’s pray for each other, dedicate ourselves to be worthy of the trust that our readers give us. Let’s hold each other accountable and pray that our postings will only encourage more and more people to trust both the messengers—and more importantly, the message that we bring.

Blog on.

An Apt Response

A woman in my church recently sent a letter to the Boulder Camera in response to a guest opinion on science and faith. For those who don't subscribe her letter follows. The original piece appears at the bottom.



FAITH/SCIENCE

Both systems rely on belief

In his essay, "Faith is outside realm of science," Joel Selbin (Guest Opinion, Jan. 8) says, "Science seeks answers without creating or tolerating myths or calling upon faith ... since it [faith] is by definition not based upon any evidence, it is outside the realm of science. This is the primary reason intelligent design should not appear in a science class."

However, Professor Selbin needs to find another argument against teaching intelligent design, because faith is already in the science classroom via teachers and textbook writers who base their understanding of science on philosophical naturalism, the unproved belief that nature is a closed system of cause and effect (nature is all that exists and all that has ever existed).

Over 60 years ago historian Jacques Barzun wrote, "The so-called warfare between science and religion [should really] be seen as the warfare between two philosophies and perhaps two faiths." The battle over evolution is merely one incident "in the dispute between the believers in consciousness and the believers in mechanical action; the believers in purpose and the believers in pure chance." (Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner: "Critique of a Heritage.")

More recently, in a notorious speech at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, avowed evolutionist Michael Ruse candidly stated, "I think that philosophically one should be sensitive to what I think history shows, namely, that ... evolution, akin to religion, involves making certain a priori or metaphysical assumptions, which at some level cannot be proven empirically." Ruse also thoughtfully advises his colleagues not to admit this in a court of law. (A transcript of Ruse's speech is online at www.arn.org/docs/orpages/or151/mr93tran.htm.

GAYLE NOWELL
Lafayette

-----------------------------

Selbin: Faith is outside realm of science

By Joel Selbin
January 8, 2005

School boards around the country are considering whether to put faith-based Intelligent Design alongside science-based evolution in science classes.

In fact, in October, the Dover, Penn. school board, by a 6-3 vote, ordered biology teachers at Dover Area High School to include in the curriculum the "theory of intelligent design." This represents the first such mandate in the United States. Similar proposals questioning the teaching of evolution and proposing the teaching of ID are being dealt with in about 40 states.

The recent re-election of an administration that advocates "creation science" and often makes political decisions on faith-based philosophies rather than on hard, cold reality, only reinvigorates the nationwide efforts to inject religion into science classes. Religion has a clear place in the home, in comparative religion courses and in churches, synagogues, mosques, etc., but it has no place in science courses.

After the Supreme Court in 1987 banned the teaching of creationism in public schools on grounds of separation of church and state, creationists have changed their call for teaching "creationism" to the teaching of "intelligent design." Only the words are different. The so-called "theory" is not.

The claim by creationists that evolution is merely a theory, is quite simply, and outrageously, false. Evolution has been observed and very extensively established by thousands of scientists, many thousands of times over about 140 years and at sites around the world. The results have been published in thousands of independent articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Evolution, under attack by certain fundamentalist Christians, is very well established by scientific observations.

Scientific theories are not like the average person's casually saying "I have a theory about this or that." Scientific theories are constructs of an educated human based upon study and observations of nature. But a theory, an idea generated within the mind of one scientist, is very different from the continuing observations and experimental facts obtained by many, usually independent, scientists. These facts may or may not conform to or support the theory. Thus, theories and experimental results/facts (which often turn into laws of science) are very different things.

There is not just one theory of evolution, but several competing ones. Like any other scientific theories, a single theory of evolution can never be proven beyond all doubt. However, scientific evidence (factual information) may favor or support one theory while that evidence may end up causing a competing theory to be revised or discarded. A specific example would be Newton's theory of gravity to explain a well known observed phenomenon we call gravity. His theory has been replaced by Einstein's theory of gravity, but of course the observed effects of gravity have not changed one bit.

A theory must be able to do two powerful things. It must be able to satisfactorily explain what we already know, and it must be successful in predicting things we do not yet know. When scientists do not understand something, they set up observations and experiments and seek independent and reproducible results. When the proponents of ID (the creationists) do not understand or cannot explain something, they simply attribute the unknown to an even more, albeit magnificent and glorious, unknown, an "intelligent designer." . Science seeks answers without creating or tolerating myths or calling upon faith. There is nothing wrong or unsatisfying with faith. However, since it is by definition not based upon any evidence, it is outside the realm of science. This is the primary reason intelligent design should not appear in a science class.

Finally, the ID folks insist that all things, including life and the incredible universe around us, require a creator. I and no one I know yet fully understand how the universe and life came into being. But these are part of the great challenges to the human intellect that make science so fascinating. And considering how utterly complex and magnificant both life and the universe are, how much more complex, magnificant and incredible must be an "intelligent creator."

But since the ID people require that all things must have a creator, I would ask them to explain to us: Who or what created the intelligent designer? Was it an even more complex and incomprehensible intelligent designer? And who or what designed that and....

Joel Selbin is a retired professor of chemistry who lives in Boulder.

I'm back...finally

Well after being sick for almost 3 weeks and traveling to three separate conferences, I'm back. And in the two days since I've been home I've joined the Firefox Revolution. I read about Firefox in the Wired Magazine that came in the mail on Friday.

I decided to move to Firefox for two reasons. One, because it sounded fast and cool and it is. Two, because I'm so mad at Microsoft for their arrogant mistreatment of customers as evidenced in the SP2 debacle. I heard one of my organizations IT managers say that the misery of SP2 would sink any other company and should sink Microsoft. He also said his next laptop will likely be a Apple because Microsoft has become such a nightmare.

I figure Firefox is a market force brought to bear on the lazy, arrogant monopoly at Microsoft.

Join the resistance.

Sick

I was planning on blogging tonight but I'm sick as a dog. I have the worst cold in a long time. Back Soon.

Chrenkoff: The 12 most stupid tsunami quotes

Chrenkoff has "The 12 most stupid tsunami quote. "

Stupid is actually being kind to these quotes.

If you didn't see this, enjoy!

Back to Blog

I've been working at DCC so I had not blog time. However my life is changing as we speak. I begin in earnest preparations to move to Boston. I should have more time to squeeze in some blogging.