Of 104 catastrophic injuries sustained by female high school and college athletes from 1982 to 2005 — head and spinal trauma that occasionally led to death — more than half resulted from cheerleading, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research. All sports combined did not surpass cheerleading.
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I'm thankful for the good food we eat here in our field dining facilities. As my 1st Sergeant said, "they feed us like it may be our last meal." I'm thankful for a clean, dry bed to sleep in. I'm thankful I don't have to live in a tent this time. I'm thankful for clean laundry and clothing that doesn't feel or smell like dirt. I'm thankful for running water. That way I can at least wash my face and shave every morning. I'm thankful for flush toilets, no matter how fragile the plumbing system. I'm thankful for air conditioning and ice cream when it's 120F outside. I'm thankful for mail. E-mail's OK, but you really know you're special when someone takes the time and trouble to sit down with pen and paper and write you a letter or send you a card. It' like they're giving of themselves to you. You really know who cares about you when you receive "Snail Mail." What's particularly moving to me is when you receive mail from total strangers, like when you receive cards and letters from school children and church groups that you don't know, but they know you because of your family members and friends. I'm thankful that I have access to a telephone, so that I am able to call home on occasion and hear the voices of my loved ones. I'm thankful for the all volunteer military. I'm glad we have a military of professionals. There's nothing worse than to be in a war zone with a bunch of malcontents. I'm thankful for my fellow service members. They are truly "America's best and brightest", no matter what some people say. I'm thankful that most Americans support the troops. I'm thankful for the selfless veteran's groups that made us feel welcome and appreciated during our transit to Iraq; at midnight at a virtually deserted airport in Bangor, Maine, even when the temperature was zero degrees outside.
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I’ll have to say, as frustrated as I got watching the clip (and it is EXTREMELY frustrating) I laughed quite a bit when Rosie made the ironic comment in reference to the mainstream media: “In America we are fed propaganda.” That made me laugh. Was she listening to her own rant?
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I wrote the book because of the dangers of having questions about Romney's faith become occasions for attacks on the Mormon Church which will then become wider attacks on the idea of people of faith being in the public square.
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During the past several years, more than 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed the Global Warming Petition. Signers of this petition so far include 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists (select this link for a listing of these individuals) who are especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth's atmosphere and climate. Signers of this petition also include 5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences (select this link for a listing of these individuals) make them especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide upon the Earth's plant and animal life. Nearly all of the initial 17,100 scientist signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields. In addition to these 17,100, approximately 2,400 individuals have signed the petition who are trained in fields other than science or whose field of specialization was not specified on their returned petition. Of the 19,700 signatures that the project has received in total so far, 17,800 have been independently verified and the other 1,900 have not yet been independently verified. Of those signers holding the degree of PhD, 95% have now been independently verified. One name that was sent in by enviro pranksters, Geri Halliwell, PhD, has been eliminated. Several names, such as Perry Mason and Robert Byrd are still on the list even though enviro press reports have ridiculed their identity with the names of famous personalities. They are actual signers. Perry Mason, for example, is a PhD Chemist. The costs of this petition project have been paid entirely by private donations. No industrial funding or money from sources within the coal, oil, natural gas or related industries has been utilized. The petition's organizers, who include some faculty members and staff of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, do not otherwise receive funds from such sources. The Institute itself has no such funding. Also, no funds of tax-exempt organizations have been used for this project.
We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
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Despite all the huffing and puffing, the truth is no one knows how much of the current warming trend is caused by man. Some of it surely is. And some of that anthropogenic warming is caused by the man-made rise in CO2. But how much is attributable to CO2 is not known. In the absence of that vital knowledge, people speak of a consensus of scientists. That's a way to get around the lack of knowledge and the inability to predict (which is the conventional proof of scientific knowledge, hence the usual emphasis in science on testable hypotheses.) Perhaps people and nations will choose to act on the basis of a claimed consensus. They have done so in the past, sterilizing their poor neighbors in the name of eugenics, gulping milk for their ulcers, downing antioxidants to prevent cancer, and soon. But all those behaviors were ultimately proven to lack a scientific basis — in other words, they are superstitions.
...Any departure from environmental orthodoxy is marked by ad hominem attack, vigorous spread of false information, claims of criminality and mental derangement, and general nastiness. Apparently this is one area where reasonable people cannot disagree. It's interesting that any entity as complex, changing and difficult to comprehend as the environment should be guarded by organizations that allow no deviation from a single point of view toward what needs to be done. One might have predicted a rather broad range of environmental viewpoints, promoted by an equally broad range of institutions and activist organizations. There is some variation among organizations, of course. But on the subject of global warming, no deviation. That is to say, I am aware of no environmental organization that does not claim global warming is a major threat that must be dealt with now. I leave it to your readers to explain that puzzle. Complex subject, simplistic response.
...Most of the people I know who are anxious about GM say that their concerns lie with the fact that the technology is of unproven safety. They share their worries with like-minded people by use of their cell phones. When I remind them that cell phones are a technology of unproven safety, and that the construction of all these wireless networks around the world and in our houses is a development of unproven safety, they just shrug. They don't care. Even though most of them are old enough to remember the false fears about cancer and electromagnetic radiation. You'd think that fear could be easily reawakened in them, but no. From this I conclude fears are a matter of fashion. Worries are like clothing styles, they come and go, rise and fall, based on what the worry fashion leaders tell the herd of independent minds to fear this year. GM is fashionable to fear. But that will change.
In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.
Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.
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"Graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researching public policy with Jacob Bronowski. He has taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT."
He's "a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of ER".
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“Perhaps the most disturbing scene of the afternoon, however, involved the man who pulled down his pants in front of women and children and defecated on a burning U.S. flag.”
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First, let’s start with a couple of facts: The blogosphere is important. It’s more important on the left than it is on the right, for sure, but politicians of all stripes have reached a consensus that the goodwill of the blogopshere is something to be courted.
This isn’t because of bloggers. Rather, it’s because of our readers. Blog readers, both left and right, are exceptionally high–end consumers of news. Among blog readers, there is a disproportionate amount of what Malcolm Gladwell calls “mavens” in his book “Tipping Point.” To generalize, blog readers are well informed big-mouths. They wield influence beyond their numbers.
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In October 2005, when she first wrote in her blog about her cancer, Cathy had this to say:
“I’m beginning to feel a responsibility to point out that lung cancer, which kills more people annually (about 163,000) than the next four most common cancers (colon, breast, pancreatic and prostate) combined, is terribly underfunded compared to other diseases: $950 in research money per lung cancer death, compared to $8800 for breast cancer and $34,000 for AIDS.
"That’s because the vast majority of lung cancer (about 85 percent) is still caused by smoking, even though the rate for lifelong nonsmoking women like me (and Christopher Reeve’s widow) has been going up for some mysterious reason, and the general attitude is that smokers deserve whatever they get.
"But half of all lung cancer patients have been nonsmokers by the time of diagnosis, sometimes for decades, like Warren Zevon. If they deserve to get sick, then I suppose so do people who are overweight or don’t exercise or who have promiscuous sex with strangers, all of which are contributing factors for various illnesses that get much more sympathy in the form of research dollars. Maybe the amount of attention we pay to a disease should have less to do with how many celebrities, magazine editors and junk bond kings carry its banner, and more with how many people actually die of it.”
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"Global warming science is uneven and evolving," Barton said.
Gore insisted that the link is beyond dispute and is the source of broad agreement in the scientific community.
"The planet has a fever," Gore said. "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action."
Gore's congressional testimony marked the first time he had been to Capitol Hill since January 2001, when he was the defeated Democratic presidential nominee still presiding over the Senate in his role as vice president. It comes 20 years after Gore, then a congressman from Tennessee, held the first hearings in Congress on global warming.
(AP) Former Vice President Al Gore testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 21, 2007,...
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Gore appeared before a joint hearing by two House committees, with his wife, Tipper, sitting behind him and a stack of boxes beside him containing hundreds of thousands messages asking Congress to act on global warming.
Later in the day, he was to testify before a Senate committee that included Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Gore has said he has no plans to seek the presidency again, but he ranks third in some polls and could threaten Clinton's front-runner status if he decided to enter the race.
Gore said he hopes whoever is elected president in 2008 "can use his or her political chips" to lead the world toward a new global climate treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto protocol that requires 35 industrial nations to cut greenhouse gases. The Bush administration argues Kyoto would hurt the U.S. economy and objects that high-polluting developing nations like China and India are not required to reduce emissions.
"I fully understand that Kyoto, as a brand if you will, has been demonized," Gore said.
Gore was warmly welcomed back by some of his critics, such as Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, who remembered serving with Gore's father and bantered with Gore about an evening boat ride they took together. "You're dear to us, but I just don't agree with you on this," Hall said.
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Radio personality and writer Garrison Keillor, of “Prairie Home Companion” fame, has apologized to gays upset by the March 14 installment of his syndicated newspaper column, saying he was just teasing. In the column, Keillor said: “Gay marriage will produce a whole new string of hyphenated relatives. In addition to the ex-stepson and ex-in-laws and your wife’s first husband’s second wife, there now will be Bruce and Kevin’s in-laws and Bruce’s ex, Mark, and Mark’s current partner, and I suppose we’ll get used to it. “The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men—sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That’s for the kids. It’s their show.”" Syndicated gay columnist Dan Savage and New York City activist Andy Humm, among others, took exception to Keillor’s piece. Savage called “Keillor’s attack on gay parents” “offensive,” “damaging” and “misinformed.” Humm called it “viciously homophobic,” and staged a one-man picket of a March 17 live broadcast of “Prairie Home Companion” in Manhattan. “Keillor is so repelled by the idea of gay parents and same-sex marriage that he needs to employ trivializing stereotypes to put them down,” Humm said. “Bigotry like this is shameful and we hope the NPR audience will tell Keillor what they think of his prejudices.”
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Another surprise sighting is that of giant magnetic field loops crashing down onto the Sun's surface as if they were collapsing from exhaustion, a finding that Golub describes as "impossible". Previously, scientists thought they should emerge from the Sun and continue blowing out into space.
"Almost every day, we look at the data and we say – what the heck was that?" says Golub, a member of the XRT science team.
Astronomers do not yet know what to make of the surprises, but they hope Hinode will help solve many big puzzles. One is that the temperature of the Sun's tenuous outermost atmosphere, or corona, is far hotter than the layers underneath, which are nearer its energy-generating core.
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Discussions on global warming often refer to 'global temperature.' Yet the concept is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility, says Bjarne Andresen, a professor at The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, who has analyzed this topic in collaboration with professors Christopher Essex from University of Western Ontario and Ross McKitrick from University of Guelph, Canada.
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Mr. Gore: You have said several times that we have 10 years to act to stave off global warming. Was that 10 years from the first time you said that or 10 years from now? We just wanted to get a firm date from you that we can hold you to.
Mr. Gore: How can you continue to claim that global warming on Earth is primarily caused by mankind when other planets (Mars, Jupiter and Pluto) with no confirmed life forms and certainly no man-made industrial greenhouse gas emissions also show signs of global warming? Wouldn’t it make more sense that the sun is responsible for warming since it is the common denominator?
Mr. Gore: Joseph Romm, the executive director for the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, has said we must build 700 large nuclear plants to stave off climate change. Where do you stand on the need for nuclear energy?
Mr. Gore: Do you think the earth is significantly overpopulated and that is a major contributor to your view of climate change. (If yes, what do you think is a sustainable population for the planet?)
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It was there that I learned all me courtin' --
Many lessons I took in the art --
Till Cupid, the blackguard, while sportin',
An arrow drove straight through me
Mush, Mush, Mush tural-i-addy
Me Mush, Mush, Mush tural-i-ay.
So I lathered him with me shillelagh
For he trod on the tail of me
Mush, Mush, Mush tural-i-addy.
And just like the Dingle for gold,
I lathered him with me shillelagh
For he trod on the tail of me coat.
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* orange — standing for Irish Protestants
* green — signifying Irish Catholics and the republican cause
* white — representing the hope for peace between them
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St. Patrick is believed to have driven the snakes from Ireland. Once a pagan himself, St. Patrick is one of Christianity's most widely known figures.
The modern secular holiday is based on the original Christian saint's feast day also thought to be the date of the saint's death. In 1737, Irish immigrants to the United States began observing the holiday publicly in Boston and held the first St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York City in 1766.
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1. I was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center Operation
2. I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z.
3. I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, [Wall Street Journal reporter] Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.
4. I was responsible for the Shoe Bomber Operation to down two American airplanes.
5. I was responsible for the Filka Island operation in Kuwait that killed two American soldiers.
6. I was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, which was frequented by British and American nationals.
7. I was responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing the New (or Second) Wave attacks against the following skyscrapers after 9/11:
a. Library Tower, California.
b. Sears Tower, Chicago,
c. Plaza Bank, Washington state.
d. The Empire State Building, New York City.
8. I was responsible for planning, financing, follow-up of Operations to destroy American military vessels and oil tankers in the Straights of Hormuz, and Straights of Gibralter, and the Port of Singapore.
9. I was responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing for the Operation to bomb and destroy the Panama Canal.
10. I was responsible for surveying and financing for the assassination of several former American Presidents, including President Carter.
11. I was responsible for surveying, planning, and financing for the bombing of suspension bridges in New York.
12. I was responsible for planning to destroy the Sears Tower by burning a few fuel or oil tanker trucks beneath it or around it.
13. I was responsible for planning, surveying, and financing for the operation to destroy Heathrow Airport, the Canary Wharf Building, and Big Ben on British soil.
14. I was responsible for planning, surveying, and financing for the destruction of many night clubs frequented by American and British citizens on Thailand soil.
15. I was responsible for surveying and financing for the destruction of the New York Stock Exchange and other financial targets after 9/11.
16. I was responsible for planning, financing, and surveying for the destruction of buildings in the Israeli city of Elat by using airplanes leaving from Saudi Arabia.
17. I was responsible for planning, surveying, and financing for the destruction of American embassies in Indonesia, Australia, and Japan.
18. I was responsible for surveying and financing for the destruction of the Israeli embassy in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines, and Australia.
19. I was responsible for surveying and financing for the destruction of an Israeli 'El-Al' Airlines flight on Thailand soil departing from Bangkok Airport.
20. I was responsible for sending several Mujahadeen into Israel to conduct surveillance to hit several strategic targets deep in Israel.
21. I was responsible for the bombing of the hotel in Mombasa that is frequented by Jewish travelers via El-Al airlines.
22. I was responsible for launching a Russian-made SA-7 surface-to-air missile on El-Al or other Jewish airliner departing from Mombasa.
23. I was responsible for planning and surveying to hit American targets in South Korea, such as American military bases and a few night clubs frequented by American soldiers.
24. I was responsible for financial, excuse me, I was responsible for providing financial support to hit American, Jewish, and British targets in Turkey.
25. I was responsible for surveillance needed to hit nuclear power plants that generate electricity in several U.S. states.
26. I was responsible for planning, surveying, and financing to hit NATO Headquarters in Europe.
27. I was responsible for the planning and surveying needed to execute the Bojinka Operation, which was designed to down twelve American airplanes full of passengers. I personally monitored a found-trip, Manila-to-Seoul, Pan Am flight.
28. I was responsible for the assassination attempt against President Clinton during his visit to the Philippines in 1994 or 1995. . . .
29. I shared responsibility for the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul the second while he was visiting the Philippines.
30. I was responsible for the training and financing for the assassination of Pakistan's President Musharraf.
31. I was responsible for the attempt to destroy an American oil company owned by the Jewish former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, on the Island of Sumatra, Indonesia.
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When college students pack up and spend a couple of days at another campus, it's usually to attend a sporting event—or maybe a long, boozy fraternity party.
But at Princeton this week, college students are gathering from around the country to take part in something radically different: a workshop on chastity.
If your jaw just dropped, you probably have plenty of company. But when you recover, you ought to start cheering: The workshop is a healthy sign that young people are becoming disillusioned with today's "hook-up" culture.
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The average temperature in February 2007 was 32.9 F. This was -1.8 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 34th coolest February in 113 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.Update:
The Gore Effect is a phenomena in which several places Al Gore visits to give his global warming speech experience unusual snowfall or record cold temperatures. Examples include:
* Jan 2004, when Gore spoke in NYC, NYC had the coldest weather in nearly 50 years.
* Nov 2006, 2 weeks before summer, Al Gore visits Australia to give his speech, as a huge snowstorm hits.
* Feb 2007, Gore presentation canceled at Maryville University, due to snowstorm
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The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.
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And this is the new thought to me:
How can we be serious about the Great Commission, if very little discussion surrounds seeing the poor as an unreached people group worth reaching, even though they make up 2/3rds of the world?
I realize that the poor haven’t been traditionally included in the “ethnos” category — the people/language group distinction as defined in the Great Commission passages (ie make disciples of all nations). Yet, as Hayes argues, the same kind of cross-cultural, contextualized, incarnational ministry is required to reach the poor as is required to reach other people groups.
In other words, we talk of learning a language and culture of a people group so we can do contextualized, incarnational ministry, but we rarely talk about crossing the socio-economical barrier to understand the “common realities” of the poor as a “people group.”
Yet, nearly 1 in 10 verses in the Bible speaks of the poor in some way. The poor, the widow, the orphan, the outcast, the hungry and thirsty, are central to God’s heart. And as Matthew 25 argues so clearly, Jesus wants them in his kingdom and he wants us to help get them there.
What would happen to our movement building strategies if we embraced the poor as a distinct people group worth reaching?
I wonder.
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The book that Scopes was teaching was a popular biology book of the day--George Hunter's Civic Biology (1914). Bryan was not just disturbed by the teaching of evolution but more broadly by the whole social Darwinist agenda, including both capitalism and genetic superiority. Civic Biology was a vicious social Darwinist tract. Here are some excerpts from the book, courtesy of Eugenics Watch:
Hunter's Civic Biology, p. 195-196 The Races of Man. — At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; The American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America. Hunter's Civic Biology, p. 261-265 Improvement of Man. — If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future generations of men and women on the earth might not be improved by applying to them the laws of selection. This improvement of the future race has a number of factors in which we as individuals may play a part. These are personal hygiene, selection of healthy mates, and the betterment of the environment. Eugenics. — When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics. The Jukes. — Studies have been made on a number of different families in this country, in which mental and moral defects were present in one or both of the original parents. The "Jukes" family is a notorious example. The first mother is known as "Margaret, the mother of criminals." In seventy-five years the progeny of the original generation has cost the state of New York over a million and a quarter dollars, besides giving over to the care of prisons and asylums considerably over a hundred feeble-minded, alcoholic, immoral, or criminal persons. Another case recently studied is the "Kallikak" family. (Footnote: The name Kallikak is fictitious.) This family has been traced back to the War of the Revolution, when a young soldier named Martin Kallikak seduced a feeble-minded girl. She had a feeble-minded son from whom there have been to the present time 480 descendants. Of these 33 were sexually immoral, 24 confirmed drunkards, 3 epileptics, and 143 feeble-minded. The man who started this terrible line of immorality and feeble-mindedness later married a normal Quaker girl. From this couple a line of 496 descendants have come, with no cases of feeble-mindedness. The evidence and the moral speak for themselves! Parasitism and its Cost to Society. — Hundreds of families such as those described above exist today, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites. The Remedy. — If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with some success in this country. Blood Tells. — Eugenics shows us, on the other hand, in a study of the families in which are brilliant men and women, the fact that the descendants have received the good inheritance from their ancestors. The following, taken from Davenport's Heredity in Relationship to Eugenics, illustrates how one family has been famous in American History. ...
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When 'Sensitivity' Is a One-Way Street
The Associated Press reports from Santa Rosa, Calif., on an interesting political-correctness kerfuffle:When a few classmates razzed Rebekah Rice about her Mormon upbringing with questions such as, "Do you have 10 moms?" she shot back: "That's so gay." . . .
After Rice got a warning and a notation in her file, her parents sued, claiming officials at Santa Rosa's Maria Carillo [sic] High violated their daughter's First Amendment rights when they disciplined her for uttering a phrase "which enjoys widespread currency in youth culture," according to court documents.
Testifying last week about the 2002 incident, Rice, now 18, said that when she uttered those words, she was not referring to anyone's sexual orientation. She said the phrase meant: "That's so stupid, that's so silly, that's so dumb."
But school officials say they took a strict stand against the putdown after two boys were paid to beat up a gay student the year before.
"The district has a statutory duty to protect gay students from harassment," the district's lawyers argued in a legal brief. "In furtherance of this goal, prohibition of the phrase 'That's so gay' . . . was a reasonable regulation."
We're not sure this is worth making a federal case over, but it's certainly a revealing window into the politically correct mindset. So vigilant is Carrillo High about protecting gay students from harassment that it has declared certain phrases unsayable, even when the intent plainly is not invidious and when--as appears to have been the case here--there were no gays around to feel "harassed" by the comment. Yet according to Rebekah's parents, the students who actually were harassing her for her religion were not disciplined. Political correctness is not really about sensitivity and courtesy, which require mutual respect. Rather, political correctness entails intolerance for some prejudices but impunity for others.
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Why shouldn't Christians oppose Mitt Romney because of his Mormonism?
Because the civic religion in America is founded very much on the Constitution's Article Six premise that there is no religious test. That was to act as a formal impediment to state action and to foster an attitude of Americans—that we love religious liberty, that we are defenders of religious tolerance.
Would any theological beliefs be disqualifying?
Not a theological belief. But if a theological belief resulted in a political position, it could. For example, if a Raelian believed that we needed to embrace cloning, I would say, "I can't vote for you because you're in favor of cloning."
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WASHINGTON, DC—A report of the American Psychological Association (APA) released today found evidence that the proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harmful to girls’ self-image and healthy development.
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The New York Times reports that South Korean men are increasingly marrying
mail-order brides from Vietnam:
More and more South Korean men are finding wives outside
of South Korea, where a surplus of bachelors, a lack of marriageable Korean
partners and the rising social status of women have combined to shrink the
domestic market for the marriage-minded male. Bachelors in China, India and
other Asian nations, where the traditional preference for sons has created a
disproportionate number of men now fighting over a smaller pool of women, are
facing the same problem.
The rising status of women in the United States sent
American men who were searching for more traditional wives to Russia in the
1990s. But the United States' more balanced population has not led to the
shortage of potential brides and the thriving international marriage industry
found in South Korea.
How exactly has "the traditional preference for sons . . .
created a disproportionate number of men"? Traditionally, after all, a couple
having a baby didn't get to choose its sex. Do South Koreans engage in
sex-selective abortion or infanticide in order to realize their "traditional
preference"? The Times is too delicate to say.
"Brace yourself. James Cameron, the man who brought you 'The Titanic' is back with another blockbuster. This time, the ship he's sinking is Christianity.
In a new documentary, Producer Cameron and his director, Simcha Jacobovici, make the starting claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected --the cornerstone of Christian faith-- and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene.No, it's not a re-make of "The Da Vinci Codes'. It's supposed to be true.
Let's go back 27 years, when Israeli construction workers were gouging out the foundations for a new building in the industrial park in the Talpiyot, a Jerusalem suburb. of Jerusalem. The earth gave way, revealing a 2,000 year old cave with 10 stone caskets. Archologists were summoned, and the stone caskets carted away for examination. It took 20 years for experts to decipher the names on the ten tombs. They were: Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua.
Israel's prominent archeologist Professor Amos Kloner didn't associate the crypt with the New Testament Jesus. His father, after all, was a humble carpenter who couldn't afford a luxury crypt for his family. And all were common Jewish names."
"However, we both know that there are powerful voices on the Left that have no tolerance for faith. As I said, I won't name names, but here are just a very
few specifics: I've been attacked publicly by leaders of major progressive
organizations who've said that the Left has no need for religion. They've said
that religion, "whether conservative or progressive" should have no place in
politics. "It's still religion," they say. I remember one particularly lovely
comment from after I'd done a talk at a progressive political gathering (with me
still in the room), saying that the kind of religion I subscribe to "puts signs
out in front of churches that say 'Jews and gays need not apply – just white
Aryan men!'" That kind of diatribe says much more about that person's own
experience and view of religion than it does about my track record over three
decades.
Friends on the boards of major progressive publications tell me
they have fought this kind of intolerance of religion for years. A few brave
writers in those magazines, who aren't even religious themselves, have labeled
this "shooting ourselves in the foot," which is where I got the title for my
response to your piece. Friends who've tried to help the Democratic candidates
understand religion have been marginalized and disregarded – until after
embarrassing losses. I've had Democratic members of Congress who are people of
faith tell me for years that they felt marginalized within their party as people
of faith; that they were not really allowed to speak as who they were as people
of faith. And for those who don't think the Democrats have appeared hostile to
religion, read the polls. That can't just all be blamed on Fox News. "
"'We, by no means, want to contribute to any sort of tension between the
idea of Christian music and non-Christian music,' Al-Attas emphasizes. 'We play
in a lot of churches and Christian venues, but we also play in a lot of bars and
clubs that aren't religiously affiliated at all. It's really important to us to
be able to play in both of those places. "
What examples of evil in the world would count as *gratuitous* evil *according to Christian theology*?
That’s the question?
Triablogue:
Brian Insapient of the Irrational Response Squad Refuses to Put His Money Where
His Mouth Is
Nigel Calder: What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.
Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.
He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.
The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea — apart from its being politically incorrect — was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.
In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.
Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it “A new theory of climate change”.
"As for Dave Karnes, his role as one of two Marines to locate McLaughlin and
Jimeno by searching the pile when the professional rescuers had backed off is
based on reported accounts and fictionalization, since he didn't cooperate with
the film's producers. Rather than work on a picture in Hollywood, Karnes
re-enlisted in the Marines at age 45 "to go after the people who did this so it
never happens again," as he told me. (When his first tour of duty didn't take
him to Iraq, he re-upped for a second tour and made it to the combat zone,
serving 17 months there.) In the movie, Karnes leaves his Wilton, Conn., office,
dons his old Marine fatigues, stops to get a Marine Corps haircut, and visits
his pastor on his way to Ground Zero. While these events are mostly accurate,
the film seems to overplay his zeal without conveying his motivations and
reasoning. In reality Karnes wanted to dress the part of a Marine for access to
an all-but-sealed Lower Manhattan. In the movie, many of Karnes' lines are
cryptic religious references that make him seem like a robotic soldier of
Christ—a little wacky and simplistic. This may be why test audiences didn't
believe he existed, according a report in Newsweek. The man I interviewed, while
he embodied extraordinary inner conviction, was a real human being who took
risks that most of us didn't."
The Suburban Christian: As I just said in the comments to my previous post, when I was researching my suburbs book, I came across the statistic that 46% of people living below the poverty line live in the suburbs. And that figure is a few years old, so it doesn't surprise me that it's higher now. (I looked around the Census Bureau's site to see if I could find the report or news release about suburban poverty now being higher than urban poverty, but I couldn't find it offhand.) As Bob Lupton said in his book Renewing the City, "Poverty is suburbanizing."
DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2007®: "I am sure you are aware of recent events in which a component of an Adult Swim marketing campaign made Turner Broadcasting the unintended focus of controversy in Boston and around the world. I deeply regret the negative publicity and expense caused to our company as a result of this campaign. As general manager of Cartoon Network, I feel compelled to step down, effective immediately, in recognition of the gravity of the situation that occurred under my watch. It's my hope that my decision allows us to put this chapter behind us and get back to our mission of delivering unrivaled original animated entertainment for consumers of all ages."
On Friday, February 2, Campus Crusade has placed a full-page advertisement in
the USA Today Super Bowl special section. The ad features both head coaches and
points readers to a special Web site, www.BeyondTheUltimate.org.
McDonald’s beats Starbucks in coffee smackdown - Los Angeles Times: "In the ultimate coffee smackdown, it was yuppie Starbucks vs. Ronald McDonald.
And the clown won.
Consumer Reports magazine said today that in a test conducted at two locations of each emporium, its tasters found McDonald's coffee to be 'decent and moderately strong' with 'no flaws.' On the other hand, the Starbucks brew 'was strong, but burnt and bitter enough to make your eyes water instead of open.'
The March issue of the magazine, due out Monday, thus advises, 'Try McDonald's, which was cheapest and best.'"
"Most surprising, Starbucks came in not first but fifth out of the eight
samples. "Burnt, with a bitter aftertaste," said one taster. "Like gnawing on charcoal," said another. Top honors went instead to Green Mountain Roasters and
Eight O'Clock, which tasters found complex and well balanced.
By no stretch am I a trained coffee expert, but I also wasn't convinced that I've been blithely sucking down "burnt coffee" twice a day. So I devised one more test--a
tasting of coffee with milk. Why? An informal poll revealed that more than
two-thirds of the Cook's staff (including me) add milk to their coffee, and it
seemed only fair to try the brands that way, too. So I brewed up eight more
pots, added 3/4 cup warmed whole milk to each, and summoned 25
soon-to-be-jittery tasters into the test kitchen for another tour.
Sure enough, preferences changed. This time, Green Mountain and Eight O'Clock, the plain-coffee champs, ended up in the lower ranks--bland and insipid, according
to tasters. In contrast, Starbucks landed near the top, along with Millstone and
Seattle's Best, two other fairly assertive coffees. The bitter, burnt notes that
had menaced tasters in the first round were suddenly "robust" and "complex" when
tempered by the milk. Simply watered down? Not quite. Additional research
revealed that the proteins in milk (and cream) bind some of the bitter-tasting
phenolic compounds, reducing the bitterness and intensity of the coffee flavor."
Free Inquiry? Not on Campus by John Leo, City Journal Winter 2007: "Remember when the Right had a near-monopoly on censorship? If so, you must be in your sixties, or older. Now the champions of censorship are mostly on the left. And they are thickest on the ground in our colleges and universities."
Instapundit.com -: "THE BIG GLOBAL WARMING PUSH IS UNDERWAY: I won't take it seriously until they ban private jets and stretch limos.
No, seriously. A Gulfstream III releases 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide an hour. How can we demand "sacrifice" from ordinary Americans when our leaders -- including those who call for the sacrifice -- are flying in jets like this? If commercial first-class isn't good enough, they should stay home."
DirecTV is a customer service nightmare. The geniuses at DirecTV decided they could make their own DVR boxes and kick Tivo to the curb. Probably because they didn't want to pay for a brand name product. When our original Tivo box died after 2 years the box DirecTV replaced it with is an abomination of desolation.
Our "DirecTV DVR" is a functional disaster. As my wife says "it makes me not want to watch TV". Just want you want to pay for from a TV company.
It hangs. It drops the digital time code so you can't fast forward or reverse. I takes 2-5 seconds to respond to remote commands. It doesn't record what it's told to. When you try to record a live sporting event it jumps to the end so that you see the final score without seeing the game first.
When you call DirecTV they say the box needs a software upgrade, but it doesn't need a software upgrade, but it needs to be totally reset and erased, and it needs a technician to come and check the satellite. Each time I call I get a different answer. They're either lying or incompetent
Beware.
From Opinion Journal's Best of the Web:
Classic Maureen Dowd--II
Remember that New York Times piece celebrating the decline of marriage, which we noted Tuesday? Gal Beckerman of the Columbia Journalism Review astutely critiques the paper on "diversity" grounds:
Apart from a tossed-off paragraph that reminds us that, buried within these statistics, seventy percent of African-American women are single, there is nothing to indicate how the epidemic of single parentage in the black community contributes to this statistic. We imagine--though aren't told--that many of these women are raising children alone and being dragged deeper into poverty because of their unmarried status.
Instead the rest of the article is completely about those middle class white women who insist they have chosen to be without ball and chain. We meet Emily Zuzik, a 32-year-old musician and model who lives in the East Village of Manhattan, and Linda Barth, a 56-year-old magazine editor in Houston. We hear about how happy Sheila Jamison, who also lives in the East Village and works for a media company, is and about how Shelley Fidler, a public policy adviser at a law firm, has "sworn off marriage."
As far as we can tell, not only was there no socio-economic diversity among those interviewed for the piece, there was also no racial diversity. These other women, ignored entirely by the Times, might have told a story quite different than Shelley Fidler, who said, "The benefits [of singledom] were completely unforeseen for me. The free time, the amount of time I get to spend with friends, the time I have alone, which I value tremendously, the flexibility in terms of work, travel and cultural events." . . .
What's going on here? Maybe the Times . . . is just pandering to its imagined audience, among whom middle-class white woman living in the East Village of Manhattan must make up a large share. . . . If in the part of America where reporters live, being free from marriage is an unequivocally positive thing, this shouldn't mean--as this article leads us to believe--that this is the case for every woman in the country. For some, what the Times is describing as freedom feels, one can imagine, like a curse.
It also occurs to us, though, that the confirmed spinsters and gay divorcées the Times celebrates are far from the norm among middle-class white women. Only a bare majority of all women are single, according to the Times, and several factors skew this number:
The Times relied on statistics that defined "women" as anyone 15 and older, but few 15- to 17-year-olds are married.
As Beckerman notes, 70% of black women are single, which means that the rate of singledom among nonblacks (the great majority of whom are white) is correspondingly lower.
The Times itself acknowledges that many older single women are single not by choice but because they have outlived their husbands (the reverse is far less common).
If the Times intends this story to appeal to middle-class white women, then, its audience is mostly married. Why would a married woman want to read a celebration of the unattached life? Because marriage, for all it has to offer, also demands a lot of compromise and toleration. The Times article offers a fantasy to married women who, even if generally happy, find some aspects of the conjugal life frustrating. It is a work of escapism, closer to a romance novel than to serious social-science journalism.
I'll bet this kind of journalism is a big hit in the newsroom.
"When we have said these three things, then – that there is but one God, that the Father and the Son and the Spirit is each God, and the Father and the Son and the Spirit is each a distinct person – we have enunciated the doctrine of the Trinity in its completeness." – B. B. Warfield
It is an interesting fact then when Jesus said to baptize "in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19) he didn't say to baptize "in the names" of the Godhead. He used the singular of onoma and not plural.
The Trinity is a very encouraging doctrine to me because it shows me that God is a God of authority and submission, fellowship and service, hierarchy and equality. I heard in my grad level humanities classes that concepts like good and evil were man made dualities that should be rejected as manipulative and illusory. Yet in my experience, those who hold this view of good and evil passionately enforce dualities like hierarchy and equality; one being "evil" and the other "good". No one uses these terms but they are upheld with religious fervor.
The God of the Bible is three persons who are equal but those persons choose various roles of submission and authority. In the same way it seems right and healthy that adults should are equal but capable of service and being served, having authority and living under it.
BREITBART.COM - Controversial Google library project grows: "Google announced that another major US college library had joined its controversial project to put the world's books online.
The more than one million written works at the University of Texas library in Austin will be converted to digital format and added to Google Books Library Project, according to the Internet search powerhouse"
A crowded womb | the Daily Mail: "A twin leans over and kisses the cheek of her sister in a heart-warming picture that would not be out of place in any family home.
Yet these siblings are a not even born and the astonishing images have been captured on a new 'four-dimensional' ultrasound scan of the womb."
Instapundit.com -: "MORE ON THE ANTI-GUN JOYCE FOUNDATION'S funding of anti-gun research. Again, this isn't necessarily wrong but if the NRA were doing this, it would be considered a huge national scandal of bought-and-paid-for science. But the Joyce Foundation is at least as political and doctinaire as the NRA. So why does this get so little attention?|"
"Dear President Carter,
As members of the Board of Councilors each one of us has been proud to
be associated with the Carter Center in its noble struggle to repair the world.
However, in light of the publication of your latest book Palestine; Peace Not
Apartheid and your subsequent comments made in promoting the book, we can no
longer in good conscience continue to serve the Center as members of the Board
of Councilors.
In its work in conflict resolution the Carter Center has always played
the useful and constructive role of honest broker and mediator between warring
parties. In your book, which portrays the conflict between Israel and her
neighbors as a purely one-sided affair with Israel holding all of the
responsibility for resolving the conflict, you have clearly abandoned your
historic role of broker in favor of becoming an advocate for one side."
Boing Boing: iPhone - the roach motel business model: "It's ironic that a company whose name is synonymous with 'Switch' has built its entire product strategy around lock-in. The iTunes/iPhone/iPod combo is a roach-motel: customers check in, but they can't check out.
And it doesn't stop with the iTunes DRM. Apple and Cingular have been trumpeting the technical prowess they've deployed in locking iPhone to the Cingular network, to be sure that no one can switch carriers with their iPhones. Even the Copyright Office has recognized that locking handsets to carriers is bad for competition and bad for the public.
There's another thing you can't switch with the iPhone: the software it runs. You can't install third-party apps on handset. Steve Jobs claims that this is because running your own code on a phone could crash the phone network, which must be news to all those Treo owners running around on Cingular's own network without causing a telecoms meltdown.
Lock-in isn't good for you. Does anyone really believe that Apple will make better products if its customers aren't free to switch to a competitor? Or that Cingular's network and pricing will be improved by lock-in?"
From The Best of the Web:
The Gay Science?
A frequent complaint about social conservatives is that they are "antiscience" because in some cases (most notably embryonic stem cell research) they oppose scientific inquiry for moral reasons. But here, courtesy of the Times of London, is a case of social liberals who are antiscience for reasons of ends rather than means. That is, there are some things they do not think we should know:
Scientists are conducting experiments to change the sexuality of "gay" sheep in a programme that critics fear could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.
The technique being developed by American researchers adjusts the hormonal balance in the brains of homosexual rams so that they are more inclined to mate with ewes.
It raises the prospect that pregnant women could one day be offered a treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their offspring will be homosexual. Experts say that, in theory, the "straightening" procedure on humans could be as simple as a hormone supplement for mothers-to-be, worn on the skin like an anti-smoking nicotine patch.
The research, at Oregon State University in the city of Corvallis and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, has caused an outcry. Martina Navratilova, the lesbian tennis player who won Wimbledon nine times, and scientists and gay rights campaigners in Britain have called for the project to be abandoned.
Navratilova defended the "right" of sheep to be gay. She said: "How can it be that in the year 2006 a major university would host such homophobic and cruel experiments?" She said gay men and lesbians would be "deeply offended" by the social implications of the tests.
It is an article of dogma among gay-rights activists that sexual orientation is entirely biological in origin and that it is immutable. If one accepts these premises, it is harder to sustain the premise that homosexual conduct is immoral or that gays should not be protected by antidiscrimination laws. But what if science determines that there are elements of environment or even choice at play? Seems to us gay-rights activists ought to think about alternative arguments rather than making their moral conclusions dependent on an empirical supposition that may or may not be true.
