Who's side are you on?

"Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always one person at the table who holds up her hand when I serve the cake. No, really, I couldn't, she says, and then gives her flat stomach a conspiratorial little pat. Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declined the plate, and they all think, That person is better than I am. That person has discipline. But that isn't a person with discipline, that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy. A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don't eat the whole cake. You don't eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that's safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what's served on the happiest days of your life.

This is the story of how my life was saved by cake, so, of course, if sides are to be taken, I will always take the side of cake.

- from Eat Cake by Jeanne Ray

My religion centers around pie of course but the devotion is the same.

In all seriousness, there is something profound in having the maturity to enjoy, in moderation, the simple pleasures that God has woven throughout life to lighten our hearts and minds. To reject them is to hold God in contempt.

So, of course, if sides are to be taken, I will always take the side of pie.

Prager Podcast Power

Talk Radio Online::Show: "The Language of God With Dennis Prager
Prager H2: Guest: Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project and one of the world's leading scientists. His book is The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."

Now leave before I taunt you a second time...

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today: "'Tour de France winner Floyd Landis denied on Thursday taking performance-enhancing drugs during the race and said he would fight to clear his name after testing positive for the male sex hormone testosterone,' Reuters reports.

Only the French would consider the presence of testosterone in a man's system suspicious."

Oh No!

The Onion - America's Finest News Source: "Report: Not Even Green Tea Can Help You Now"

Maybe the red wine will compensate.

Disaster

Rocky Mountain News: Local: "The Big Thompson flood in 1976 is the deadliest natural disaster in Colorado history.

On July 31, 1976, a four-hour super storm dumped 12 inches of rain into the mountains west of Drake, beginning about 6:30 p.m.

A wall of water barreled down more than 20 miles of the Big Thompson Canyon, killing 144 people and causing $35.5 million in property damage.

By best estimates, as many as 3,000 residents and vacationers were in the canyon that Saturday night.

For many, the weekend was to stretch into Monday for a three-day celebration of the 100th anniversary of Colorado statehood.

Today, people will gather in the canyon to remember those who died in the flood."

A group of Campus Crusade Staff women, hiking during a break in their summer assignment at CSU, were among those killed. This was, to my knowledge, the deadliest disaster in CCC history.

The Achilles Heel of Theology

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today: "The Detroit News goes out for a drink with a visitor from the east:

U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who was in town Sunday to help Gov. Jennifer Granholm campaign for her re-election bid, took time to take a jab at the Bush administration for its lack of leadership in the Israeli-Lebanon conflict.

'If I was president, this wouldn't have happened,' said Kerry during a noon stop at Honest John's bar and grill in Detroit's Cass Corridor.

Now, our first thought when we read this was: Yeah, if Kerry were president, he wouldn't spend his days moping around some bar in Detroit. But then we realized that's not what he meant. He meant that if he were president, Hezbollah wouldn't be waging war on Israel. Just like, as John Edwards said in 2004, 'we will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases. . . . People like Chris Reeve will get out of their wheelchairs and walk again.'

If Kedwards have the power to eliminate war and disease, why don't they use it? This is the age-old problem of evil:

Why does [John Kerry] allow evil? If He is all powerful, then He should be able to prevent it. If He is omnipotent and does nothing about evil, then we suspect that there are limits to His goodness, that there is something wrong with Him, that He is not all good. Perhaps He has an evil streak, or is truly malicious and we are merely His toys--expendable and counting for nothing.

Or perhaps, like Al Gore, he doesn't exist."

I heard for years (from Bono, TV and other megaphones of pop culture) that only televangelists made outrageous claims like this. I guess the impulse to claim "savior" in return for personal gain is strong for all sides of the culture. Huh.

Of course it is much worse to make wild claims in the name of God than making wild claims and acting like you are God. "Thou shall not carry the name of God in a worthless manner, for the Lord will not hold guiltless the one who carries his name in a worthless manner." Exodus 20:1

[Shudder]

Hoist the mainsail!

A New Champion Pie

Today I was caught up to the third heaven and given a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb. This means of pie grace was the three berry served at a cafe on Charles St. here in Boston. I cannot mention the name of the establishment due to national security concerns. Suffice to say it could easily be used to induce truth telling by the most hardened fiend.

The filling was a kin to sweet preserves. The top crust like unto a flaky croissant. The end crust was startling, calling to mind Danish butter cookies. I trembled.

I had this piece of pie for lunch today with a lovely beverage. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Behold the power...

...of this FULLY OPERATIONAL riding mower!

In the long run I'll save a lot of money and time with this. And I had know idea how much fun it would be. I'm the king of the Whirled!! 

Quality Education Today

AP Wire | 07/20/2006 | 61 lawmakers demand UW fire instructor over Sept. 11 theory: "Barrett is active in a group of scholars who believe the twin towers were blown up by U.S. government operatives to spark war in the Middle East. His remarks drew intense criticism from politicians who questioned whether he was fit to teach.

After a 10-day review, Farrell said Barrett is a qualified instructor, has good plans for his class and can present his unconventional views as one perspective on the attacks. Farrell stood by his conclusion on Thursday.

'I still have every expectation this will be a very positive educational experience for our students,' he said. 'Some are upset about Mr. Barrett's viewpoints on 9/11 and don't want to pay much attention to what makes for a quality educational experience.'"

More money for Govt...by cutting taxes.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Remember the folks who said the tax cuts would "blow a hole in the deficit?" Well, revenues as a share of the economy are now expected to rise this year to 18.3%, slightly above the modern historical average of 18.2%. The remaining budget deficit of a little under $300 billion will be about 2.3% of GDP, which is smaller than in 17 of the previous 25 years. Throw in the surpluses rolling into the states, and the overall U.S. "fiscal deficit" is now economically trivial.

NYT Downsizing

NYT to cut paper size and close plant | Reuters.com: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co. (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) plans to narrow the size of its flagship newspaper and close a printing plant, resulting in the loss of 250 jobs, the company said in a story posted on its Web site late on Monday."

I'm sure they will blame the Bush Administration for this cruel maneuver to protect corporate profits.

Double Black Diamond

Stanley Kurtz on Big Love & Polygamy on National Review Online: "Will Scheffer, co-creator of Big Love, wrote Falling Man and Other Monologues, a play about gay life, as a direct response to the public battle over same-sex marriage. Commenting on Falling Man, Scheffer said, 'The voice from the conservative right is getting louder and louder, so I think we have to state who we are in our lives, especially with the reversal of the marriage thing in California.' Scheffer sees Falling Man as an entry into the gay marriage battle, and he and his co-creator, Mark Olsen clearly see Big Love the same way.

Speaking to The Washington Blade, Olsen said he and Scheffer wanted to address our culture war over the family by trying to 'find the values of family that are worth celebrating separate of who the people are and how they're doing it.' In other words, family structure shouldn't matter as long as people love each other. Scheffer adds that what attracted him to the Big Love project was 'the subversive nature of how we deal with family values....I think what's really exciting about the show is the nonjudgmental look we have on our characters.' Now maybe cultural radicals are mistaken when they claim that they can change society just by shaping the movies, plays, and television we watch. But clearly this kind of cultural transformation is exactly what Scheffer and Olsen have in mind."

Blame America Only

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today: "This rhetoric about 'cycles' appears to reflect a theory of moral equivalence, but in fact it is something else. After all, if the two sides were morally equivalent, one could apply this reasoning in reverse--excusing, for example, the alleged massacre at Haditha on the ground that it was 'provoked' by a bombing that killed a U.S. serviceman--and hey, violence begets violence.

But America's critics never make this argument, and its defenders seldom do. That is because it is understood that America knows better. If it is true that U.S. Marines murdered civilians in cold blood at Haditha, the other side's brutality does not excuse it. Only the enemy's evil acts are thought to be explained away by ours.

Implicit in the 'cycle' theory, then, is the premise that the enemy is innocent--not in the sense of having done nothing wrong, but in the sense of not knowing any better. The enemy lacks the knowledge of good and evil--or, to put it in theological terms, he is free of original sin.

America ought to hold itself to a high moral standard, of course, but blaming the other side's depraved acts on our own (real and imagined) moral imperfections is a dangerous form of vanity."

Still treading water...

I'm still too busy to blog. I've started work downtown in Boston and I'm trying to slowly work through the pile of a month of moving since we left Colorado. Still working around the house as well. We love living in New England. But blogging continues to be light with a chance of increased activity on the horizon.

It's not pie...

...but it will do. 

Underground

It's been a long while since I've written here.

We moved. I unpacked boxes, shop vacuumed our flooded basement, built a mosquito bomb, set up internet, phone and tv service, met some neighbors and even had time to attend my first Red Sox game.

Right now I'm posting here: www.globallearncomm.blogspot.com

I have the privilege of documenting this event.

I'll be back in the swing soon.

Interviews: Garrison Kiellor - Christianity Today Movies

Interviews: Garrison Kiellor - Christianity Today Movies: "And in the name of Devotion they were doing these big set-piece prayers in which they were bringing in stories from Scripture and admonishing people—that's not prayer. But, when we kneel down and go through a list, and we begin with prayers for leaders of our country and for the nations of the world and then we come down to prayers for other churches and for bishops and priests, and then we come down to those who are in need and those who are sick and we think or we speak their names—to me this is prayer. This is prayer in which one throws oneself before God without a heroic pose."

Home

Today we officially became residents of Reading, MA.

TCS Daily - The Parent Trap

TCS Daily - The Parent Trap: "There's also the decline in parental prestige over generations. My mother reports that when she was a newlywed (she was married in 1959) you weren't seen as fully a member of the adult world until you had kids. Nowadays to have kids means something closer to an expulsion from the adult world. People in the suburbs buy SUVs instead of minivans not because they need the four-wheel-drive capabilities, but because the SUVs lack the minivan's close association with low-prestige activities like parenting, and instead provide the aura of high-prestige activities like whitewater kayaking. Why should kayaking be more prestigious than parenting? Because parenting isn't prestigious in our society. If it were, childless people would drive minivans just to partake of the aura.

In these sorts of ways, parenting has become more expensive in non-financial as well as financial terms. It takes up more time and emotional energy than it used to, and there's less reward in terms of social approbation. This is like a big social tax on parenting and, as we all know, when things are taxed we get less of them. Yes, people still have children, and some people even have big families. But at the margin, which is where change occurs, people are less likely to do things as they grow more expensive and less rewarded. "

This, of course, is why I view my minivan as a badge of honor, even in Colorado. Of course as Dan would say, I'm "confident in my weirdness".